• Promotional Products: Advertising

Advertising with Promotional Products
What are promotional products? Promotional products are useful items of value, which
feature a company logo. Why a useful item? To be truly effective, a promotional product
must be retained by your customer and make a number of “impressions”. A “giveaway”
item is an item of low perceived value that generally only provides a few impressions.
Customers generally do not retain a giveaway item for an extended period of time, which
in the end limits their advertising value.
Promotional products can be used in a variety of ways. They can be used to create top of
mind awareness in your (potential) customer, they can serve as a thank-you gift. When
used effectively a promotional product can be a great motivational tool to aid in effective
advertising.
In a successful advertising campaign, we want to set a series of goals. Those goals
include: reaching a number of customers or potential customers, inspire those customers
to take some action and ultimately we want to convert that action into sales.
Promotional products can be used in an advertising campaign to increase the campaign’s
effectiveness by providing additional motivation to the target audience. Including a call
to action in your campaign is a must. Use a promotional product to increase the response
to that call to action by adding an incentive. This might be as simple as “purchase in the
next 10 days and receive a free gift”. Using a promotional product will help motivate a
prospect that is wavering on a purchase.
A balance must be maintained when selecting a promotional product for this type of call
to action. The product must be attractive and have a perceived value sufficient to initiate
that action. Balancing that value is its cost; the cost of the product must be covered by the
current purchase or the ultimate or lifetime value of the customer when attracting new
customers.
Presentation of the offer must also be carefully considered. Consider the following three
statements all describing the same promotional product:
Purchase in the next 10 days and receive a free gift!
Purchase in the next 10 days and receive a free letter opener!
Purchase in the next 10 days and receive an original Zippy Letter Opener!
Which of these three statements has the greatest perceived value? Would prefer to have
an “Original Zippy Letter Opener” than just a letter opener?
Selecting a promotional product is more than just picking an interesting product from a
catalogue. Presentation of the promotional product can add to its value and influence the
action taken by your customer. Call you promotional product advisor for help in selecting
an effective promotional product for your next advertising campaign.
Business Partner of Flagstaff