Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Creative Ways To Distribute Promotional Imprinted Products

How many times have you seen a clever marketing idea & said to yourself: I wish I had thought of that? Well, here are five concepts that my customers & I collaborated on. 

Be careful, coming up with an idea is buying the cart before the horse. Before you even think of one, the first step is to know your target audience......who they are, where they are & what their needs are.

Promotional custom products are a must for any growing or established business, but sometimes the way they are handed out will give it the extra impact you are looking for. It may be that one creative step that will make someone really notice you & call them to action. It will make you stand out among your competition, that's for sure.

  • I mentioned in a previous article (Customized Promotional Items That Are Walking Billboards,dated 10/18/2010) how one of my customers goes to local soccer practices & matches & high school football games when it rains. He hands out plastic ponchos with his company name on them. Next to the players, he's the most popular person there. He's sought after--people stand in line to get one. The best thing is, these ponchos fold up into feather weight, compact bundles & can easily be toted to the next rainy outdoor event. And his name will again be seen.  
  • Another customer, an auto dealership, bought plastic piggy banks with their logo & name on them to distribute among people who walked onto the lot. They put a coupon in each bank & ten displayed them throughout the dealership. Some coupons were for maintenance of the car & other were for discounts in the parts department. You couldn't tell ahead of time what the coupon was for until you randomly picked your bank. A couple of the banks contained coupons for a free Bluetooth system.
  • A chain of gyms bought beach balls with their logo vividly displayed & on hot summer days when the beaches were crowded, they had employees go to various ones in Los Angeles county. The employees stood either on a rise above the beach or on the pier & threw the balls out at the crowd. People clamored to get them & for the rest of that day & for weeks after, the gym's logo bounced along the Pacific coastline in LA.
  •  A health insurance company had 8" X 11" plastic envelopes imprinted with their company name & all their contact information. Also, imprinted on the flap: "With Our Compliments--Keep For All Your Medical Records & Receipts". When prospective clients came into their office or when an agent went to call on someone at their home, they gave them one of the envelopes filled with their brochure & pamphlets. This is such smart marketing......everyone can use this & it's a convenient way to keep all medical records in one place. Every time someone uses the envelope, the insurance company's name is right there before them.
  • This winter, a seminar was held for high school juniors about finding the right college for them, how to maneuver websites for financial aid & advise on how to prepare for the college experience. Since there was a lot of information being thrown at them, they were told not to take notes. They could miss something important as they were writing or typing or worse, later misinterpet what was actually said. At the end of the lecture, flash drives with uploaded information from the seminar & links to all the necessary websites were passed out to all who attended. Of course the flash drives had the sponsoring company's name on them.
Don't have the time or the budget to get creative with your campaign? That's alright too. The bottom line is that you have promotional imprinted products at your disposal to distribute among your targeted audience at all times. You've heard the saying......"out of sight, out of mind......don't let that be you.

Invest in customized promotional items that represent your company while being useful to your client or prospect. And once you have them, use them! So many customers keep them in a store room waiting for that special occasion or customer to give them to.  That defeats the purpose--no one will know about you unless you invite the public to rummage through your storage closet.

The whole idea is to get your company name out there & to be recognized. Pens travel from hand-to-hand like a dollar bill does, t-shirts are walking billboards & will go wherever your customer goes, shopping bags are seen by 100's of people monthly as they are used in grocery stores. Letter openers, note pads & stress relievers are only a few of the items that are used regularly by people & every time they're used--your name & logo is in front of them.

Be creative & have fun with your promotions. Good luck next time you hand them out.
IT'S YOUR COMPANY......SHOW IT OFF!!!
Ronni Sherman

3 comments:

  1. This is one terrific bullrtin.
    Full of good ideas--I'm thinking of either the envelope for Medical bills or the ponchos.
    You'll hear from me very sopon.

    Eddie
    Discount Drugs Of Canada

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great idea, Thanks for sharing. Promotional products are great strategy for marketing your business. Most of products are very cost effective so take advantage of these cheap promotional products.

    ReplyDelete
  3. promotional products are the most popular thing they growing or establish your business at cost effective price.
    promotional items leeds

    ReplyDelete