Here’s What Promotional Products Can Do for Your Business
Are our promotional products really worth it? Yes, they are. Customers love them, and they’re an excellent way to target your marketing message towards the kinds of customers who might be interested in your products and services.
Eighty-three percent of people say they like promotional products, and 85 percent end up conducting business with a company after receiving one of its promotional products. A useful, high-quality promotional product will have a long lifespan in a customer’s possession, getting used over and over again and getting your brand message out to everyone in the customer’s orbit. So, if you’re looking for a way to generate more leads and sales conversions, strengthen your customer relationships, and maybe even save a little money on marketing, promotional products could give your business the boost it needs.
Save Money on Marketing
When you’re running a business, you want to save money wherever you can. That doesn’t mean you can cheap out on marketing, but buying some quality promotional products to hand out to loyal customers, give away at trade shows, and so forth can be an investment that pays significant dividends in terms of customer loyalty, brand recognition, and sales leads and conversion.
Customers who receive promotional merchandise use it, especially stuff like USB drives, pens, coffee mugs, and tote bags. And when they use it, their friends, families, and coworkers see them using it — and they see the branded messaging it carries, which increases their brand awareness, even if they’re not necessarily always conscious of their increased awareness. You can use social media to cross channels with your promotional merchandise by using hashtags and inviting customers to post pictures of themselves using their promotional items or giving positive reviews of their promotional items.
And when customers finish with their promotional items, 63 percent of them pass the items on to someone else — so your marketing message will remain vibrant even as the used item finds new life with a second owner. The greater the reach of your branded messaging, the lower the cost per impression, so promotional materials can actually be one of the least expensive marketing forms when you consider the extensive reach these products have.
Promotional Products: Build Stronger Customer Relationships
Customers appreciate promotional products, and most customers remember which companies they’ve received promotional items from, even after some time has passed. Customers are definitely much more receptive to branded merchandise than they are to other forms of advertising, even marketing messages displayed on popular streaming sites or social media and websites like YouTube. It’s not hard to understand why customers prefer a branded coffee mug or keychain over even a five-second YouTube spot. Customers get someone useful out of the promotional product, and if it’s a high-quality product, they’re going to form positive feelings about that brand each time they use it.
Branded merchandise creates a personal relationship between your brand and the customer, and giving out promotional items has the bonus of turning your customers into ambassadors for your brand. They’re representing your brand out in the world, using your items in their daily lives, and they’ll be much more likely to stick with your products if you can appeal to them with a gift they’ll love.
Generate Leads and Sales
You would think that most customers would take the free goodies and run, but in fact, a gift makes most customers feel more favorably about doing business with your brand. Salespeople tend to see 22 percent more customer referrals when they hand out promotional merchandise versus when they do not, for example.
At tradeshows, 76.3 percent of those surveyed said they thought favorably of companies that gave them gifts, and 71.6 percent remembered the names of the companies that gave them products. About one-third of customers carry their promotional items on their bodies, prime positioning for advertising reach. Many customers will keep their promotional products for a year or more, which means your customer base will have repeated exposure to your brand messaging over time, and that helps generate sales leads and conversions, too.
Promotional products might be just what your business needs to bring in more sales leads and forge stronger customer relationships. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how much customers appreciate a nice gift and how effective branded merchandise can be as a result.
