Promotional Products – Defining Them For A Better Understanding Of Their Marketing Role
The term promotional products is a general one used for a group of items whose importance within the promotional mix of advertising, direct mail, publicity, packaging and sales promotions is growing rapidly. Defining promotional products can be harder. Typically they are items used for promoting an organisation, given by a supplier to a target audience or client base as a form of recognition as to their importance to the gifts supplier, as a reward for some activity, to promote a specific marketing slogan or simply to provide an easy-to-hand source for contact details.
What differentiates these types of products and their usage from other elements of the marketing mix is that they can be used within each marketing medium – advertising, publicity, direct mail, packaging and sales promotions – as standalone items or as part of a wider campaign. They also add a form of accountability. Put simply, promotional products can be used to increase response rates. They can generate data for analysis and therefore improve future strategic marketing actions. Sure, there is still a scatter-gun approach and mentality when it comes to some of the lower value giveaways but a finely tuned promotional campaign, with carefully selected products, can help to improve the return-on-investment (ROI) for any promotional campaign.
Improve Response rate with Promotional Products
When used in combination with a call-to-action, requests for promotional products, whether in the form of a coupon, phone-in or website landing page provide hard numbers. Put this way promotional products actually improve the response rate for promotional campaigns. For this reason alone it is imperative that the right products are chosen and matched to the campaign and target audience. The key word is “appropriateness” with a functionality and value that will be appreciated.
Promotional products can therefore help to maximise the effectiveness of any spend within a marketing communications strategy. They can improve the overall ROI of any marketing budget whether it is private or public sector based.
In today’s environment reducing waste is also an important marketing campaign consideration and products used within specific promotions can actually help to reduce invested resources by instigating a more focused and channel approach. This is especially true off course as the unit value of an item rises, as constrained by the overall budget for the campaign, the marketer has to become even more selective about the target audience the items are to be sent to.
The marketing message or “imprint” will generally consist of the company or organisation name, contact details including website address and a slogan or call to action. Selecting the right product for a promotion must also take into account time frames. Desktop promotional items tend to get seen around five to six times each working day by not just the recipient but also other people within the office, be they colleagues, customers, suppliers or other visitors. Other more personal items such as a quality executive pen may get seen less but last far longer than for example a branded pack of promotional mints. Again the keyword is appropriateness.
To get the right promotional products for your promotion contact our Promotional Gifts Consultants. Simply complete our quick response enquiry form, call UK 0845 8386 368 or email us.
For more information see our pages covering: FAQs, Materials and Resources.
