Building brand awareness is difficult in a world of ever-increasing clutter. Until recently, advertising required three exposures to present your marketing message and brand to an individual. In an age of social media, interstitials, digital content, and mobile computing, consumers are bombarded with countless marketing messages. At present, ten exposures is a more desirable figure than three. How does one get those exposures in a cost-effective manner? One way to consistently and inexpensively maintain brand awareness is through the use of premiums. Premiums are small trinkets branded with the company information that are handed out for free for the customer to use. Types of premiums include flash drives, key chains, promotional pens.
Why Promotional Items
Cost: Getting repeated exposures is expensive. Buying television airtime, internet advertisements, and billboards is expensive. Putting these messages in front of the same customers is very challenging.
Durability: Unlike most marketing messages that are presented and discarded, promotional items repeatedly provide brand information to the user.
Distribution: High-quality premiums are often passed around in the original recipient's social circle. It is common for office workers to pass around their decent pens and functioning flash drives. Items bearing the company information will help maintain brand awareness.
What Promotional Items
Small items like promotional pens are a useful tool with which to maintain brand awareness. They typically will not contain detailed information about a company or its products, so the ideal premium will contain a resource where the customer can go to learn about the company. These days, that resource is almost always a web site address. If a customer examines a brand name, doesn't recall the nature of the company, and cannot easily search for the company, the premium will not be effective at maintaining brand awareness. However, a well-designed item that is durable and useful can keep a customer coming back repeatedly.
When buying promotional items, always ensure that they are:
Durable: Items that are poorly constructed will break quickly. This not only has the effect of reducing the amount of time that the branded item is circulating and exposing others to the name, but it also reflects poorly upon the quality of the company. Don't be tempted to flood the market with the cheapest things you can find.
Useful: For someone to look at the brand name on a promotional item, they have to use that item. For someone to pass around an item, it must be useful to that other person. The more useful an item it is, the greater use it will see. The greater use that an item sees, the more the marketing message will circulate.
Informative: Writing out a long corporate history and a description of a product line on a pen is not feasible. However, the premium should give customers a web address and provide a familiar brand logo that indicates the company's line of business.
Part of a Balanced Campaign
Promotional items can be a valuable tool with which to maintain brand awareness. Premiums are not a substitute for a proper marketing campaign. Like any other technique, promotional items should be just one facet of your marketing campaign. Ideally, the company will be conducting other marketing activities, such as attending trade shows, engaging in personal selling, and advertising at every reasonable opportunity.
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The author has an interest in promotional pens but doesn't claim to be an expert - however, if you need real expert advice and help on promotional and custom pens the people at http://www.logopens.co.uk/clubrowcreations/ are held in high regard, have had some great reviews, and come highly recommended.
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