Tuesday 3 November 2009

Designing a promotional products marketing campaign

Promotional Products provide a great medium to promote and grow your business. The following will help you put together a successful Promotional Products marketing campaign

Set clear goals for your promotion
What do you want to achieve? E.g. Build brand awareness? Create immediate sales? Provide a thank you gift your customer?
Setting clear goals will make it easier to choose items that will help your business. Promotional items reinforce you are a business that cares, enough to invest in longer-term practices. This provides your customers with a sense of security.

Identify your target market
Do you want to target all your potential customers/clientele, or do you want to target subsets with different campaigns/items?

Set a budget
Include promotional products as part of your marketing/advertising budget.
Identify your costs up front and include hidden/extra costs such as decoration set-up, freight, storage (if applicable).

Utilise joint ventures/partnerships
Can you work with suppliers or other businesses to promote your businesses together? Joint promotions can also help you to strengthen your relationships with key business contacts.

Order appropriate quantities
Don’t buy more items than you need. Remember that some items have a limited shelf life, or may be replaced by new items eg USB drives with a certain capacity today may be less useful in 12 months time
High turnover items, eg pens can be used for long periods so it may be better to order large quantities and store excess so you don’t pay extra freight and print set up charges unnecessarily.

Determine your method of product distribution
Once you have your promotional item, how will you distribute them, and who will receive them?

Measure
Measure the results. You can set an intended rate of return (ROR) to determine how effective your campaign is.
The best method to achieve this by is to measure a variable before and after the promotion. eg the number of sales, the number of enquiries etc.
Bear in mind that sometimes results can occur some time after the conclusion of a marketing campaign. E.g. Advertising now may still cause inquiries months after the campaign has ended.
Where possible try to eliminate other variables. E.g. other marketing campaigns at the same time

Follow these simple steps to utilise the power of Promotional Products to help maximise your marketing campaigns. Or call one of the team at Synergy Promo Products and we will help with your business marketing.

Why should your business use Promotional Products?

The 7 “secret” reasons why your business should use promotional products:

1. Increase brand awareness
2. Increase brand loyalty
3. Build and consolidate relationships
4. Promote a call to action
5. Provide a cost effective method of marketing
6. Receive exposure longevity
7. Promotional products add value and can be lots of fun!

1. Increase brand awareness

Promotional products help customers to remember a company’s name, and have the potential to expose the business to new clients.

2. Increase brand loyalty

The easiest customer to sell to is an existing customer. Rather than continually trying to attract new customers, reward your existing customers and benefit from the lifetime value of the customer.

3. Build and consolidate relationships

Reward loyalty as stated above, and build relationships with prospective clients. Going over and above what everyone else does is a sure fire way the impress new prospects.

4. Promote a call to action

Use promotional products to encourage your targeted audience to undertake a specific action. Call a certain number, fill out a survey etc.

5. Provide a cost effective method of marketing

Promotional products are an affordable advertising method for almost any business. Promotional products offer the ability for long-term results from a one-off cost.

6. Receive exposure longevity

The reach and use of a promotional item can be extensive and extend to recipients not initially intended for its use. Compared to traditional advertising mediums, once the ad is finished, so is your exposure. The beauty of promotional products are that the recipient, or even a successor of the original recipient, can use your product and receive your message.

7. Promotional products add value and can be lots of fun!

If appropriate and thoughtful promotional products are used, recipients will be extremely thankful, and respond to your advertising in an extremely positive manner. Conversely using humour, unique or fun products can stick in the mind of potential customers.

There is a lot of flexibility in being able to produce campaigns, in cost, targeting and merchandise. By targeting your marketing to selected audiences, you can increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

In fact there is no way of measuring just how long your promotional product will continue to keep working for you. This must surely make promotional products the lowest form of advertising for a business.

How to use Promotional products

Popular uses of promotional products include business gifts, employee relations, incentives, promote brand awareness, trade show handouts and to encourage specific responses eg providing feedback

The 3 absolute keys to using promotional products:

1. Set goals for your marketing campaign

Determine the reason you want to advertise.
Is it to increase brand awareness?
Promote a call to action?
Increase short-term sales?
Your marketing goals will determine how you can best use promotional products to help your business.

2. Choose the best products to accomplish your goal

Determine which types of items will suit your campaign best.
e.g. to increase brand awareness a financial planning company may give away a branded calculator.

3. Decide who your target audience and supporters will be

Make sure your products are tailored towards your target market. e.g. A computer reseller may give away laptop bags with each laptop purchase to advertise their brand of laptop.

How to find an effective promotional product

Article Link

Promotional products represent one of the most conomical and effective marketing mediums.

The most important consideration when choosing an effective promotional product is, “Will it get used?”
The more a promotional product is used, the more advertising there is for your brand/company and the greater the value to the client for having received your product.

Thus the best promotional product for your business is not necessarily the most expensive product, but the most thoughtful product.
E.g. for an auto-mechanics business, something simple and economical like a keyring to put car keys on will remind the customer of their mechanic every time they get in their car

Try to choose items that represent, complement or say something about your company.
E.g. a gym can give away branded drink bottles, as they are an item that complements the use of the gym.

Conversely you can think of your clients and cater towards their needs.
E.g. if a large number of your clientele played golf, you could give away branded golf balls, golf accessories, golf shirts etc.
These would be items sure to be used and perceived with high value.
If you can determine who your target market/audience are, you will find it easier to meet their needs.

Another consideration is whether you want third party exposure.
For instance fridge magnets are commonly used by businesses to ensure clients have their contact details handy. However there is minimal exposure to people who don’t live in that particular household.

A re-useable shopping bag eg a branded Non-woven bag however would be used by the client and when walking, travelling and shopping, members of the public would be exposed to the business’ branding.

Ensure the products you choose are valued.
E.g. if choosing pens as a promotional item, cheap pens are more likely to be thrown away than ones that look nice or write well

One final word of advice – as promotional products are used for branding, ensure the decoration area is large enough for the logo/message you want displayed. Small items and products with seams, ribbing etc may limit the size of the decoration space