5 Steps for Designing Promotional Products for Your Business
Do you want to attract customers and leave an unforgettable impression on them? Are you struggling hard with marketing tactics? Instead of just sending out an advertising message, bundle it up with a free gift and see how it successfully strikes your potential customer. People like to receive gifts, even a small item like a coffee mug wrapped in ribbon makes a customer feel happy. According to a study conducted by Promotional Products Association, 83% of customers in the US would like to have promotional products along with advertising messages. Promotional products will cost you much less than other advertising and marketing techniques, the real trick is to design them uniquely. Here are five simple steps to start with!
1st Step: Define the Purpose of Your Promotional Products
The first step towards making your promotional products worth noticing is to define the purpose you want to achieve through your promotional products. It can be attracting customers, branding, showcasing your business on trade shows or giving away corporate gifts. Once you know what purpose or objective you want to achieve, you can select items that can make great promotional giveaways. For instance, if you want to do branding with your promotional products, giving away signature t-shirts, mugs, photo frames and calendars is a good idea. Always make sure that you use quality material for promotional giveaway items.
2nd Step: Do Research on Your Competitors’ Promotional Giveaways
Second step is to do your research on competitor brands to see what they are offering to the customers. You might get insightful and inspiring ideas from them, however make sure that your promotional products are distinctive and serve as reminders of your business. Many businesses distribute low priced gift items which is a bad business practice. Don’t make this blunder as it will kill the impression that your brand is trying to build. Be smart and list down the good and bad things of your competitors’ promotional items strategy and make yours better.
3rd Step: Seek Your Customers’ Feedback Regarding Promotional Products
The next step is to seek your customers’ feedback regarding promotional products. Use short and interesting surveys to evaluate what your customers actually want as promotional items. Use live chat for website for conducting such surveys online. This is likely to bring you more and honest responses since the conversation is taking place in real time with your customers. After you get your customers’ feedback regarding the promotional giveaways, you can consider giving away items that most of your customers want. If for instance, you are launching a new line of lip care cosmetics, your customers might suggest you to give them gift packs of your popular products. If this seems like an expensive venture you can consider giving away one product bundled with a voucher or coupon, it will make your customers feel that you value their suggestions.
4th Step: Use Products that make Thoughtful Gifts and Personalize Them
After you have followed the above three steps, the fourth step is to pick products that make thoughtful gifts. You have to be considerate with the choice of products that you want to give for promoting your business and they need to define your brand as well. If for instance, you are running a company that sells software solutions, giving pens and stationary items as promotional giveaways is not a good idea. Choose a useful and relevant item as your promotional product and personalize it to make the recipients feel special. Your promotional products should have your logo printed clearly.
5th Step: Give Your Promotional Products to Employees as an Incentive or Reward
To measure the value and effect of your promotional items, give them away to your employees first. This will help you in getting genuine feedback regarding the products and improving them. Another advantage of giving promotional products to your employees is to make them feel valued and enhance their productivity, loyalty and performance. Consequently they would give you more input regarding the promotional products and you can use some creative ideas for designing these products more innovatively.