BuyersGuide

Promotional Products Buyer's Guide

by David Satina, Brand First Promotions

Promotional products are an extremely useful method to promote your company, product or service. Because they are typically distributed to a specific demographic (directly or indirectly), promotional products enable you to reach your target market with great precision. They also serve as an extension to your brand.

What are Promotional Products?

Promotional products is an all-encompassing term that applies to products that are used to promote your organization, product, service, website, or cause. These items are usually imprinted and given to existing or potential customers, investors, employees, or partners for the purpose of increasing awareness and recall.

Promotional items include a broad array of items, including: tchotchkes, trinkets, trade show giveaways, advertising specialties, premiums, gifts, awards, and logo apparel.

Why Should I use Promotional Products?

Promotional products are one of the most cost effective methods to get exposure. For example, one pen, on average, is seen by 3 people per day for it’s life. They also serve as an extension of your marketing and advertising programs. By using promotional products, advertising effectiveness is increased greater than 30%. As well, these items are proven to increase customer retention and brand recognition.

When Should I use Promotional Products?

Promotional products are a great way to thank your customers, leave behind after a sales call, give away at trade shows or other events, supplement conferences and meetings, foster cooperation, and reward achievement or enthusiasm. They are equally effective in advertising a new partnership, adding continuity to a branding initiative or increasing corporate morale and employee retention.

Promotional Products can build or destroy your brand

Promotional products are a valuable way to build your brand name. They can also greatly hurt your brand if you do not choose products properly. For example, it is crucial to ensure the products you choose match your brand or product in terms of quality and uniqueness. If your brand sells for a premium, your promotional products should also reflect that higher price point. Your products don’t necessarily have to be expensive, but they should be of high quality and unique in some way. If your market is young people, your products should project youth. If not, you have not only wasted an opportunity, you have actually hurt your brand by sending a mixed message. Other things to avoid when selecting promotional products are:

Cheap products. The products you choose to giveaway reflect upon your brand. Cheap products break. By giving cheap products, they reflect poorly on your organization. Just remember, it is okay to giveaway inexpensive products, but not cheap products.

Inappropriate items. Choose the products you give based on the demographics of your audience. For example, if you are selling to an executive, make sure the product you give is “executive worthy”. Otherwise, you probably just wasted your money.

Select durable and useful products that have relevance to your target audience. If the product breaks or is not used, what good did it do?

Select products to exceed expectations. If you do, the person receiving it will surely remember you.

When considering how much to spend on a promotional products, try considering what the person who is receiving it is worth. If you are giving an item to an employee for a job well done, give something of value. The perceived value of a nice gift outweighs a cash award of four or five times the cost of the reward. Similarly, if it is a customer, what is that customer worth? Statistics show that it is five times more costly to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one. The average sales call costs.$250-$365+ depending on the industry and geography. Only you know what your average order size and profit margin are. If you do the math, I am sure it makes good economic sense to spend $5 or more on a good customer.

Here is a good example of the above. You have been seeking to connect with an executive at a highly regarded company. You have been planning this meeting for weeks. The presentation is great. You have chemistry and expect to get the sale. Upon leaving, you give the executive a white ceramic coffee cup. Do you think that helped or hurt your cause? Executives typically drive higher end luxury cars, shop at upscale departments, and enjoy fine dining. You just gave him a basic coffee mug. That’s great if he didn’t already have one or it was a really great mug. Do you think that is true? Did you wonder why he winced upon receiving it? What do you think his opinion of you is now that you totally misjudged his tastes? He is probably thinking that he misjudged you!

What Should I Buy?

Okay, so what do you buy? According to market research, the average decision maker requires nine to eleven exposures to a product or company before they decide to purchase. It takes ten good exposures to overcome one bad exposure. If three people per day see an average pen. That equates to 15 exposures for a five-day workweek or 750 exposures in a year.

Now, say that pen leaks in your clients’ shirt pocket. You just created a very negative exposure, not to mention all of the additional positive exposures you miss out on because of the shortened life your product. You can bet that prospect remembers you now. Not only because of the cost of the shirt, but also the embarrassment it caused that person. That negative exposure transfers to your brand. The quality of the products you choose transfer to your brand. It’s human nature. That is why it is more important to purchase quality products and superbly stitched logo apparel. When buying promotional products try to think of cost per exposure.

Other things to consider when purchasing:

What are you trying to achieve? Gain a new customer, asking for a referral, signing on a new distributor.

What is the audience? Can you characterize the demographics of your audience in some tangible way based on income, age, sex, race, religion, geography, mental or physical characteristics, personality type or common interests? If not, is the program or gift taking place a specific time of year? These are all good methods to select a theme to ensure the products you provide are useful to your audience.

What is your budget. Remember, you can buy inexpensive items, but don’t buy cheap items!

When all else fails (or even if it doesn’t), don’t forget apparel. People love clothes.

Apples to Apples

How do you buy promotional products? Do you buy brand name merchandise? Do have one or two promotional product distributors that you trust to supply quality products? Or, do you put your products out to the lowest bidder?

Buying from the lowest bidder may ensure a great price, on the surface. However, it may cost you more than you know. In competitive situations, promotional distributors do not always bid on identical products. They may look alike, but there can be great variations in product quality between manufacturers. This is particularly true if one of the distributors imports the products directly from Asia. In this case, you can also expect delivery to be months rather than weeks.

Other elements that can compound the price issue are costs for set-up, artwork, shipping and taxes. One distributor may provide a fixed price plus shipping and tax, another may quote estimated shipping, only to charge a greater price afterwards, and a third may quote a slightly higher price but include everything. Which one costs the least? Typically, set-up and artwork charges fall under services and are not taxable. However, if you are purchasing the item at a set price, that distributor rolled these charges into the per piece price and is now charging you tax on top of it (whether he pays for it or not). Shipping is another great equalizer. Unless you have a firm price for shipping, you do not know how much you will be charged. Estimates are just that, estimates. In most cases they are not even ‘good’ estimates.

Cost vs. Price

A word to wise, if you are shopping strictly on price, make sure you have accounted for all of the ‘hidden’ charges. Even if you have, it does not guarantee a good buying solution. In today’s business environment, most organizations prefer to team up with their suppliers. Only in that manner can you ensure that your concerns are also your suppliers’ concerns. It may cost you a little more in the short term, but it will no doubt save you money and worry in the long term.

A Word to the Wise

When budgeting for and selecting promotional products, remember the effect they can have on your branding efforts. Promotional products provide added exposure to your company, organization, product or service. They can help to increase your brand image and take it to the next level, or create confusion in the minds of your target audience and detract from your brand. Higher quality products that meet or exceed prospects expectations will more likely be kept and used by the target audience resulting in more exposures. And finally, it is may cost less in the long run to work closely with one or two distributors to ensure quality products and a favorable reaction to any problems that might occur. A good distributor will eliminate a lot of worries by taking the guess work out of product quality, price and delivery times.