If you've ever gone to a business conference of any kind, you have likely been given or at least seen company-branded novelty items.
Not that you have to go to a conference to find such items. There's a good chance you own things like this. Pens, coffee mugs, shirts, etc. Giving away promotional gifts is a branding strategy that has been around a long time. That is because it can be very effective.
What Kinds of Items to Use
The most effective kinds of items are ones that could potentially be used frequently by the person who receives them. This is why pens are one of the most popular objects for this type of marketing strategy. Some people lose pens all the time and won't be affected by your branding as much, but then there are people like me who use the same pen for months or years - until the ink runs out, seeing the brand every day. On the other hand, lost pens tend to be found by others too.
T-shirts are another really popular item, but then you're looking at other variables like different sizes and personal tastes in clothing.
You can really use just about anything to stamp your brand on and give out to people. Being creative is the fun part, and being unique in this regard may make people remember you better.
We've received all kinds of promotional gifts at our office, like branded Kool-Aid packets and branded action figures. Fox Searchlight gave away branded hamburger phones to promote the movie Juno and now even the unbranded hamburger phones are selling.
I think the key to the success of a promotional gift is finding the right balance of potential use-frequency (something that will be seen a lot - free advertising) and creativity (unique items like the Kool-Aid packet tend to stand out more than ink pens).
Distributing the Items
Conferences are a great place to hand out your promotional gifts, because they will be targeted at people in your niche (unless you're at some random conference that has nothing to do with your business). Send them out to customers and/or relevant companies. As I mentioned, we get promotional gifts from companies sent to our office all the time.
If you operate a Brick and Mortar store, hand out your gifts to customers as they check out, or have an area at the front where they can grab them. Maybe you don't want to make them purchase something first. The whole point is to advertise your business.
What kinds of promotional gifts have you given away? What methods did you use to distribute them? How effective do you think they were?
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Comments
Free Promotional Samples
We were offering free health drink samples at our online health food store for weeks, then one day the word spread and the stampede began. Being a relatively new Internet store, our daily traffic was steady at twenty visitors a day. Even though we were hitting the top two or three pages of Google for our product offerings, in a typical week, we filled only three or four requests for free samples. That scenario changed abruptly in one afternoon.
My initial thoughts were that a health food store competitor wanted to drive us to bankruptcy by requesting hundreds of free health drink samples. To verify the authenticity of the visitors we placed phone calls to a few of them. The first three calls were to bogus numbers, but on the fourth call the nice lady informed us that she saw our offer for free health drink samples in an online newsletter. The authors of the newsletter search the web, submit information for free items and when the product arrives, they spread the word to subscribers.
Once we found the origin of the stampede, we were excited to see so much new traffic to our health food store. We were somewhat disappointed, though, that they were all going right to the free samples and bypassing our delicious content. Cleverly, we became subscribers to the free forum and entered an anonymous post that told others to go to the health drink page first, so they could see the free samples they would be getting. This worked nicely. Now, we were at least getting two page views and visitors were seeing more of our all natural health drinks and high fiber foods.
As the mad dash for free health drink samples continued, we started to get nervous about the thousands of dollars we would have to spend in mailing and product costs. We couldn't believe our eyes as the requests poured in even faster, from one every five minutes, to two or three requests per minute. That is when we realized that our little health food store was now listed on several free forums and the potential for thousands of free sample requests became a nightmarish reality. We decided to put the brakes on the whole promotion.
We wrote a note on the free samples page mentioning our surprise at the thousands of health conscious people who suddenly wanted free health drinks. In order for us to satisfy those who had already submitted their mailing information to our online health food store we had to take a break so we could catch up on all the requests. We encouraged visitors to try again later, look around the store for all natural foods, and use a special code to receive 20% off any purchase.
The moral of this story is, if you are going to give away free samples make sure you are prepared financially and ready with proper site navigation. Set limits, add the "while supplies last" disclaimer, ask for phone numbers, and add an E-mail verification step. In addition, be the first to post your link on those free forums, so that customers are directed to the pages you want them to go to in order to receive freebies.
If you are offering something that people are searching for and they are willing to give you some contact information to get it, then "free" can be a powerful advertising tool. Just keep in mind that it's not "free" advertising. Giving away free stuff can cost you plenty of time and money. Be prepared for the stampede and be ready to round up the herd when they arrive.
Great Lesson
How giveing us enought time
How giveing us enought time to read the first page. We know that you know it, but how the hell can we read it in 5 seconds?
We are not interested in signing anything until we get an idea of what the hell you are selling or promoting
Another great promotional idea
Many promotional products wear out quickly, get squirreled away in a drawer, or otherwise are rarely seen by your customers. The key is to any successful promotional product is to be durable, useful, and visible. Also, for the business who pays for them, they also need to be inexpensive.
I've found that eGrips appliqués satisfy all of these criteria. Their high-friction surface keeps cell phones and other hand-held electronics from slipping off dashboards, tables, and such. They can be easily branded with your company's message and cost less than T-Shirts.
This is one example of an effective promotional product.
If you're going to give
If you're going to give stuff out, especially expensive things, try to get people to write a review about your business on one of the many local business search engines out there. If you offer them an incentive to do so, you're far more likely to get them to take action... and the "bang for the buck" is far greater than just giving it away.
Good tip
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