Promotional Products Alchemy - Universal

Imagine you are having a typical Tuesday. You talk to some clients on the phone, in email or in person, conduct some sales, have your typical meetings, etc. Then your boss or your best employee says, “I have a way to dramatically raise revenue, help our customers generate more business for themselves, and as a result, make us into their go-to marketing consultant. The best part is we can do all of this with our existing customer base!” Would you be all ears? Then please read on, as I introduce the world of selling Promotional Products.

How Promotional Products Work

I’m going to bet that in your kitchen, in your closet, in your car or on your desk at work, you can think immediately of half a dozen products with company logos on them. And, I’m betting you can remember 8 of 10 logos on those products. Now, I’m no great prognosticator, but the statistics, and my own experience over the years says the same: We all love promotional products. We are given them by a brand at an event, passed on from a friend or sales rep, and depending on how useful or attractive they are, we use them until they wear out or give them away when we are done with them. We drink out of them, eat with them, and even use them to express ideas. We remember who gave us those items, and think of them more favorably than brands who don’t give us items.

Promotional Products are for Everyone

They have general appeal to everyone – who doesn’t like to get a useful product for free? It turns out – the world loves getting free stuff… who knew? Here’s some stats I bet you didn’t know:

85% of people remember the brand on their promotional product
7+ months is how long most people, on average, keep a promotional product (how long do they keep a magazine ad?)
9.8 is roughly how many promotional products that people in the U.S. own right now
40% of women in the U.S. own a promotional bag, compared to 28% of men
61% of people in the Western US who receive promo bags are more likely to do business with the advertiser

The Best Promotional Products Tell A Story

By now, I’m betting you are ready to consider selling promotional products to your customers. In this and future articles, I’m going to focus on the secrets of how to build appropriate and successful promotional product ideas, make presentations, and generate ROI for any customer you have in future articles.

The very first secret: Tell a story with your promotion, and the user of the product will understand the story of the brand. Just as a white-button-up shirt says something entirely different than an embroidered pocket-T in the eye of the customer, promotional products tell a story in the eye of the person who uses it. A MopTopper Pen with a logo has a different use and effect than a Double-Knit Beanie or a Rubix® Cube. Understanding your customer, and what or who the promotion will be used for, is key to creating really successful promotions.

In future issues we will explore case studies that prove the effectiveness of selling promotional products, choosing the ones that will tell a story uniting the customer with the brand of the company it came from, resulting in high brand visibility, favor with recipients, and create a chain of ROI that means more money in everyone’s pockets.

*Research provided by the Advertising Specialty Institute, ©2014, All Rights Reserved. Source: 2014 ASI Ad Impressions Study http://www.asicentral.com/Downloads/Public/impressionstudy/impressions-study-2014.pdf

Steve Dolberg
Prime Line National Accounts Manager
SDolberg(at)PrimeLine(dot)com