Industry spends an estimated billions of dollars every year on promotional products or 'ad specialties.' Produced by the millions, they range in price from pennies apiece to literally thousands of dollars each.
Almost without exception, these products are imprinted with a company name or message. Most of these items are viewed as goodwill builders, gimmicks, or attention-getting giveaways.
To describe them as essential to promoting a business would be a substantial exaggeration in the minds of most ad-specialty or promotional-product buyers. In good times, when there's plenty of money in the company coffers, buying giveaways can be justified, but when things get tight, forget about the pens, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and colorful sunglasses.
Yet there are significant examples of how promotional products can play an integral role in setting the stage for companies to increase sales. In effect, the power is not in the promotional product, but in the way the particular product or item is used. Many firms are getting positive results from carefully crafted promotional programs built around the right promotional product.
Here are seven ways to put the persuasive power of promotional products to work:
1. Choose the product with the correct fit for what you want to accomplish. A business owner took delivery on a new Lincoln Continental several years ago. He had dreamed about the moment he would be handed the keys to his first luxury automobile.
The day arrived and the car was delivered to his office by the salesman. But the businessman will never forget when the keys were dropped in his hand, attached to a cheap, plastic key holder! He had spent more than $30,000 for the car and the dealer had diminished the importance of the sale by giving him a 19-cent key ring.
On the other hand, an aggressive insurance broker offered custom T-shirts at a landscape contractor trade show for completing a brief information form. The shirts went like hotcakes because the company had invested time, effort, and money into creating a shirt with attractive, colorful artwork with an appropriate, creative message: 'We dig landscaping.'
Every contractor wanted a shirt. It could be worn any time, anywhere, because it told the contractor's story, and, by implication, it sent the landscapers a message about the insurance agency.
At a very small show, these insurance people wrote five new accounts and received an additional 26 qualified leads.
Each shirt cost about $10. Was it worth the money? No question. The insurance agency already has signed up for the next landscapers trade show!
By making the promotional product fit what you want to accomplish, you actually build business. By the way, the auto dealer could have accomplished the goal of impressing the customer by using a leather key holder imprinted with the customer's name and placing it in a presentation case.
2. Build your promotion around a theme. More often than not, it isn't the promotional product itself that turns out to be the problem. It's the way it's used that renders the item ineffective.
A bank in Miami, did it the right way. When the bank moved one of its branches, the marketing director realized that most of the customers were senior adults who might be wary of going to the new location, even though it was less than a mile from the old office.
The bank's marketing agency came up with a comedy theme, 'Laugh All the Way to the Bank,' for a promotional program designed to appeal to the senior market and acquaint the older customers with the new location.
Customers were given a fun (but inexpensive) gift-hand buzzers, whoopie cushions, windup 'chattering' teeth, bent pencils-each time they came in and used a banking service at the new branch. The promotion resulted in retaining the current customers and actually introducing many to banking services they had never used.
When the promotion came to an end, the results were positive for both the bank and its customers.
3. Do a good job connecting the promotional product to your business. Just handing out pens or mailing calendars isn't enough. There's nothing to connect the gift with your company, yet it's the connection that makes the difference.
A marketing services firm wrote an article asking the question, 'What does every customer want?' The answer was 'ESS,' which stands for enthusiasm, solutions, and service, three qualities customers expect from people they do business with. The firm offered a gold 'ESS' lapel pin for the asking, attached to an attractive, colorful card explaining ESS.
As a result of the article being published, the marketing firm has, over the last few years, distributed several thousand ESS pins, which have come to symbolize its creativity and understanding of what customers expect. In other words, a simple three-letter pin has come to express a company's philosophy -- and the company's name doesn't even appear on it!
4. Use the promotional product to get attention. Cutting through all the clutter and getting the customer's attention is the key to marketing today. If used correctly, promotional products can make the difference between dull and innovative.
A financial services company had spent millions of dollars in print advertising in an unsuccessful attempt to get the attention of companies relocating to areas where the firm had offices. The company's ad agency came up with another approach which was highly focused and aimed at just six people-the key executives of an international firm.
Each one received a $400 leather briefcase filled with an exciting array of executive gifts and pertinent information about the company and the area. The briefcases provided the recipients with a thorough 'briefing' for relocating and for doing business with the company.
So impressive was this rather unorthodox presentation that one company officer receiving a briefcase called the financial services firm and made arrangements to deposit $18 million! A $10 million advertising campaign couldn't get the attention of the right people-a briefcase with the right message did.
5. Take advantage of the power of personalization. What should be one of the most obvious benefits of a promotional product is often missed. It's the use of the recipient's name, whether it's an individual, a company, or an organization. Everything from pencils to plaques can be personalized.
Tens of thousands of coffee mugs are given away every day. Some are used in offices, others are taken to someone's vacation cabin, while a majority wind up on a shelf somewhere. But not the 400 mugs presented to the employees of a manufacturing company in Massachusetts.
As part of a major safety program, the employees received coffee mugs individually personalized with their names. Instantly, the mugs became personal property, as if a 'this is mine; do not touch' sign went on each one.
More than anything else, personalized gifts are perceived to be more valuable. They go beyond just giving something. Those receiving the gifts know that someone thought specifically of them. This is what gives the personalized gift its unusual power.
6. Enhance the impact of a promotional product by giving it special value. Magnets are particularly popular today. Refrigerators and filing cabinets are covered with them. But does anyone really read what they say? Or is their value inherent in what they do-hold papers, notes, orders, and whatever? In other words, magnets may be seen and used, but that's where it ends.
Not necessarily, however, as a regional accounting firm has discovered. Instead of choosing some cute little magnet, the firm decided on one that measures 3 3/4' by 8'. Designed specifically for the fronts of filing cabinets, the magnet lists which financial records should be kept for what periods of time in order to meet tax requirements.
Are these magnets useful? Absolutely. Will the accounting firm's name be on display in dozens and dozens of offices? Of course. But it's not only the firm's current clients who are requesting the magnets. Others want them, too. As a result, the magnets are actually creating leads.
What's important to note is that lists of 'records to keep' have been around for decades. No one could remember they were filed. Now they're right where they belong-on the front of the file drawer-along with the accounting firm's name and telephone number.
7. Finally, remember that 'memorable' is of far more value than 'useful.' 'We want something that will be used on a person's desk' is the common request. If it meets the 'useful test,' it's considered a valuable promotional product.
In many situations, passing the 'memorable test' is far more important to achieving the goal. The briefcases were memorable first and useful second.
Soon after the Gulf War ended, a marketing services firm ordered 100 'Desert Storm' camouflage pens, with the company name imprinted in gold. The pens were sent to prospects with an accompanying letter indicating that a marketing firm's role is to increase the visibility of its clients, while it stays in the background unseen. More than a year later, people are still talking about the camouflage pens. The mailing was memorable.
As an aside, the president of the company that mailed the pens opened an envelope one day from someone who had received a pen. But the sheet of letterhead inside was blank. So he called the prospect. Instantly, the prospect's secretary began laughing, stating, 'He wrote the letter with invisible ink from his camouflage pen.' Memorable makes the difference. When that particular prospect became a client, the agreement was signed with real ink.
The purpose of a promotional product is to actually promote the company and its products and services. In the final analysis, it isn't the product that has the power; it's the impact of the gift on the recipient.
Whether it's persuading customers to come to your agency, or to think of you when they need what you do, promotional products can help give power to your message.