As a business owner, it's often difficult to know where to focus marketing efforts and where to spend marketing dollars. With an audience that seems to have an ever-shrinking attention span, how can one truly engage a target demographic to share a specific message? While there are countless media options available, the promotional product stands above all other advertising mediums when it comes to truly captivating an audience.
Although there are many reasons that the use of promotional merchandise to support other marketing efforts is invaluable, there are four key advantages that truly capture the value.
1) Tangible – People like to receive promotional products. Have you ever been to a sporting event and seen how people react to a cannon shooting out T-shirts emblazoned with the team logo and a co-sponsor? Even Sir Paul McCartney went wild over the prospect of getting a T-shirt as evidenced by this video. If a promotional product has that type of an impact on a Beatle, think about how your audience will feel.
2) Control – With a radio spot, a full-page spread in an industry magazine, or an internet pop up, there is no way to ensure that your target audience is receiving the message, let alone engaging. With promotional merchandise, each recipient can be targeted and the impact can be measured because you are handing it directly to them.
3) Recollection – Client recall after receiving a promotional product are astounding. In a recent Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) study, 88 percent of consumers recalled the name of the advertiser from a promotional product they received in the previous 12 months. When you compare that to the fact that only 71 percent of consumers recalled advertisers in a newspaper/magazine read the week before, the power of promotional products to support brand awareness is clear.
4) Delight – From the smile on the recipient’s face to the sincere expression of gratitude, you can immediately sense the joy a person receives when accepting a promotional product. There is no other form of advertising where people are not only excited to receive it, but will thank and remember you for giving it to them. Any time you create delight with your clients you differentiate yourself, your company, and your brand from the competition.
Promotional products have a dramatically positive impact on both client attitudes and brand recall. They give you absolute control of your marketing spend and, more than anything else, create delight in the heart of the recipient.
If you're still unsure of the viability of promotional marketing in the digital age, I have a challenge for you: open your linen closet at home and look at your beach towels. I have no doubt that each person reading this article will have a promotional towel that may be 10 years old or older. You kept it because it was useful and, who doesn’t love a great beach towel? I would also wager that that you knew the name of the advertiser on that towel without physically going to your collection.
That is the power of physical advertising in a digital age.
Bill has over 15 years working in executive leadership position at leading promotional products distributorships. In 2014, he launched brandivate – the first executive team outsourcing company solely focus on helping small promotional products companies responsibly grow their business. In March of 2015, Bill began a partnership with Proforma to assist their owners growing their individual distributorships. He has extensive real-world practice coaching sales teams, creating successful marketing campaigns, developing operational policies and procedures, creating and delivering RFP responses, and successfully presenting promotional solutions to Fortune 500 clients.