Promotional products might seem like a waste of money, especially if you have limited funds for marketing to begin with. But the truth about promotional products is that they’re an effective way to get your brand messaging out to a wide audience. They can also foster brand loyalty among customers, who tend to think more favorably of your brand when they receive promotional products.
Just make sure you’re offering the promotional products your customers want. Here are some of the most effective types of promotional products.
Branded Face Masks
In the Before Times, it never would have occurred to most of us to offer a free branded face mask to a customer. But in the age of COVID, face masks don’t seem to be going away any time soon, even with vaccination rates climbing. And the face mask has evolved rapidly over the past year as one of the most desirable promotional items you can offer.
Face masks are still a fact of life in most public places, and you can’t really have too many of them. Most people still wear masks most of the time when they’re out in public, and a face mask is the perfect medium for brand messaging. It’s a wearable — the holy grail of promotional products — and it’s useful and valuable to customers. Plus, it will underscore your commitment to public health and protecting the medically fragile, which will look good in the eyes of customers.
Pens
Who doesn’t love a sturdy, quality pen with good, thick ink that flows nicely? People love pens that write well and look good, and it doesn’t matter too much to most of them whose logo is printed on the side of the pen. Customers will think more favorably of your brand because you gave them a free item, and even more so if the free pen turns out to be one of their favorites.
Tumblers and Mugs
You can’t have too many insulated travel mugs or tumblers, and you always need an extra coffee cup to take to the office, right? People keep branded drinkware for about eight months, and if they use your promotional tumbler or mug at work or school, that’s more exposure for your brand messaging. Sixty-three percent of people give promotional items away when they are done using them, with promotional tumblers and mugs often finding their way into the cupboards of friends and relatives or even onto the shelves of a local thrift store, where even more people can see the brand messaging. Custom tumblers and mugs are perfect for cross-channel integration with social media — encourage users to tag your brand in photos of themselves using the drinkware at home or on the go.
Tote Bags and Shopping Bags
Giving out branded tote bags and shopping bags makes a lot of sense if you run a retail store where customers need a more sustainable option than the ubiquitous plastic carrier bag. As more people make sustainability a priority in their purchasing habits and daily lives, reusable bags are only going to become more popular, Branded tote bags and shopping bags are a great way to get your branded messaging out in public, because your customers will carry them all over town — at their favorite shops, in the park or at the beach, and while running errands. Every person who sees one of your customers carrying your branded tote gets a quick injection of brand awareness, and hundreds of people can possibly see your messaging in a single outing.
USB Drives
Few promotional items are as coveted as a USB thumb drive. Even just a couple of gigabytes of storage on a USB thumb drive can be valuable to a customer who needs a little private storage space offline. People take these items to work, to the library, and to school, and your brand messaging will travel there with them — possibly for years.
Promotional products get your marketing message out into the world, where it can be seen by everyone who comes into contact with your customers while they’re using, wearing, or carrying the branded items. The right products can significantly increase your company’s brand awareness, foster loyalty in your customer base, and help you realize your dreams as a business owner.