Yes, Promotional Products Still Have a Place in Your Marketing Strategy

These days, it’s all too easy to relegate old-fashioned, analog forms of advertising to the past. The modern world is all digital, baby and marketing is done through email, text messaging, and social media. Do promotional product giveaways even still have a place in the consumer landscape?

Yes, they do! While communications technology may be barrelling full steam ahead, digital marketing strategies meet with varying levels of success. No one really wants to open a spam email or sit through all 25 seconds of a YouTube ad. But just about everyone wants a free coffee mug, T-shirt,  reusable bag, or USB stick.

Where customers kind of resent other forms of advertising, they appreciate and even look forward to being targeted with promotional items.

So how can you integrate promotional products into your marketing strategy, in cyberspace and meatspace? It’s not as complicated as you might think. Whenever you have a chance to interact with a

customer, you have a chance to strengthen the relationship by offering a promotional product. Here are some of the ways you can make promotional products a valuable part of your marketing strategy, in 2021 and beyond.

Take Them to Trade Shows and Events

Trade shows, expos, conventions, and other events offer the perfect venue to hand out promotional items, especially items like reusable bags that customers can use to hold their stuff while they’re shopping at the event. If you’re sponsoring a local event for charity, you have the chance to hand out branded merchandise to community members who come to participate.

These events tend to be crowded, so they’re ideal for distributing high-visibility items that customers will carry or wear for the rest of the event, and customers are often already primed for a few freebies.

Use Them to Reward Loyal Customers (and Employees)

If your company isn’t using some kind of loyalty program to encourage more repeat business, you’re missing out. It can be hard to get customers to come back again and again, but 83 percent of consumers who get a promotional gift consider themselves more likely to do business with that company in the future.

Besides, while every company needs to bring in new business to thrive, there’s no better customer than the one that has developed some loyalty to your brand. Customers who were already favorably inclined toward your brand will turn into some of your biggest promoters when offered a reward for their royalty in the form of promotional products.

Your employees will also appreciate an occasional gift to thank them for their service. Don’t let promotional gifts and free swag take the place of important signs of appreciation, like a living wage or a flexible working environment. This is no time to cut costs, but you don’t have to bulk order crates of elaborate promotional items, either. Even just buying some high-quality engraved pens would do the trick.

Cross the Channel

Now that the majority of people have their noses buried in a smartphone most of the time, cross-channel marketing is in its heyday. It used to be much harder to carry a message from one marketing channel over to another, but with digitalization, it’s merely a matter of choosing a hashtag. Real-life marketing events and promotional hangouts can get pushed to the wayside even when there’s not a pandemic going on.

The easiest way to bring your promotional products into other marketing channels is to promote them on social media. You can use traditional advertising spaces to push your customer loyalty program (which its branded merchandise rewards).

Use hashtags on social media to encourage customers to flood the internet with images of themselves enjoying your branded products. The more people you can get your message out to, the better.

Get Seen

It’s in the nature of promotional product marketing that some promotional items will be better made and more expensive than others. While customers will definitely appreciate some less visible items, like pens and pencils, high-visibility items, like tote bags and shirts, will get your brand message out to more people. Choose items that will be visible to others while your recipient is using them. Branded outerwear, umbrellas, and totes are some examples.

Promotional products are very much alive and well as a marketing strategy, and that’s good news for any company looking to deepen its relationships with customers, foster increased customer loyalty, and, of course, make more money. Make sure promotional items take their proper place in your marketing strategy, so your company can continue to grow and thrive.

Photo by Jess Bailey Designs from Pexels