The Promotional Gifts Guide - What Makes Promotional Gifts The Buzz Items Of Now

We live in a world driven by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the need to show results and return on investment. Monitoring the effectiveness of promotional gifts within marketing campaigns is relatively easy compared to other activities. In a well thought through campaign, the aim for the chosen promotional items will be to get a marketing message in front of a client audience and/or improve response rates. There is an aspect of longevity here and this is off course related to the shelf and working life of the items used in the campaign.

Certain key success factors are evident within many promotional campaigns where such merchandise has been used to great effect. The choice of promotional gift is very important to the campaign. The right gift has to be chosen that is appropriate to both the target audience and the theme of the campaign itself.

Very often we can let ‘marketing myopia’ set in and what appeals to us, scores a big miss with the target audience. The key is to test and market research, and if possible to only vary one factor at a time. The old adage ‘what you cannot monitor you cannot control’ certainly applies in marketing campaigns.

Find out if the gifts you are thinking about will be well received and appreciated. Visit your clients and just as you used to look at what magazines they kept in reception and their offices as research for your advertising campaigns, look at the promotional items they have in their office. Engage them in conversation and find out what they like and dislike, what worked for them and what did not. There is no doubt that getting it right is sometimes not easy and often a promotional gifts company will provide consultancy advice to avoid some of the common pitfalls such as: think ‘heat and reveal’ mugs with images which could gender or faith offensive as a live example.

We also live in a world of niche-customisation. This means that whilst trying to maximise budget we need to investigate the possibility of personalising the gifts for our target audience. Targeted promotions tend to have improved response rates because their initial impact is to create interest and a desire for more information.

The imprint is the second most important factor to consider. An imprint is the print that will be applied to the items. It will typically include any combination of the following: logo, company name, contact details, strap line, call to action and many other traditional advertising-related items. Sometimes less is actually more and with promotional items this can be the case. You can often witness a difference between a client’s generated imprint and one from a marketing agency. The latter will have a strong strapline, generating impetus and creating an action. The former will typically focus more on the company name. What has to be remembered is that imprint areas are relatively small on some items and it is vital that your imprint can be clearly seen. Colour choice and gift material should also impact this decision.

Timing is the key to all things. With promotional merchandise there is no escaping the fact that what is today’s buzz can be tomorrow’s old news. We need to make sure that we are hitting the promotion at the top of the curve rather than on the way down. We need to make sure we are using gifts with a high desirability factor and if possible, in the early adoption phase of their own life-cycles. Consider iPODs and imagine how many people would have responded to an offer or realated promotion when first introduced compared to today.

Will people queue to get their hands on your chosen promotional gifts? Get it right and your merchandise will stay in front of your clients for years to come, providing a reminder of your organisation and its purpose and benefit to them.

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