Marketing with Promotional Products

There is an old sales axiom that points out that each year millions of drill bits are sold in spite of the fact that nobody really wants them. They want holes!

In a sense that’s how promotional products generally work–as tools for achieving an outcome. Of course, with hundreds of thousands of different items to choose from, it is easy to get seduced into thinking of our industry as just a lot of fascinating products to sell. However, to do so is to miss the true strategic value of what we have to offer.

At the most basic level we are in the recognition, communication, motivation, and promotion business. Our function is to help our clients solve business problems, to take advantage of business opportunities and to enjoy the results. To help us achieve our communication and motivation objectives we have hundreds of thousands of specialized tools at our disposal. These tools, by their tangible and useful nature, have advantages over many other communication media. For example:

• Ours is the most appreciated medium. It is the only advertising/promotion medium that people appreciate enough to thank the sponsor.

• Ours is the most lasting medium.

• Ours is the most targetable medium — even more so than direct mail alone.

• Our medium’s incentive nature makes it one of the most powerful behavior modification tools in business today.

• Our medium captures the power of tangible symbols in more ways and with more power than any other communication medium.

• Our medium has the potential of delivering the lowest possible cost per exposure to a pre-selected target.

• Our medium offers creative impact that other media simply cannot match, including: novelty, interactivity, appropriateness, usefulness over time, individual personalization, presentation interaction and third-party endorsements.

With these strategic advantages, our medium is ideal for giving people what they value most: (1) solutions to their problems, (2) ways of maximizing their opportunities and (3) a means of feeling good about these processes. Promotional products accomplish this through many varied programs which typically focus on some combination of:

• Communication

• Motivation

• Recognition

• Promotion

Virtually any business problem that involves motivating people can be solved with an effectively-designed program which implements one or more of these elements. Since our medium involves the distribution of promotional producs to individuals, once you define the audience it is possible to influence its actions in a profound way.

Promotional Products communication, motivation, promotion, Promotional Products, recognition

Today businesses and consumers are asking why each expenditure is necessary and what benefits it is intended to yield. This is especially true in advertising. As Rapp and Collins observe in The New Maxi-Marketing, “The proliferation of media choices and the escalation of media costs have increased the need for truly accountable advertising expenditure…All advertising, whether by image-building brand advertisers or by direct marketers, must be fully accountable.”

This accountability starts with having specific measurable objectives and ends with evaluating whether those objectives were achieved by the promotional methods used. As business becomes more sophisticated and accountability continues to increase, impulse purchases of promotional products will diminish. This will lead to more competition in the product sales arena.

The new bottom line. If there is one pervasive question that seems to run through every business relationship it is, “What have you done for me lately?”

The good news is that program selling can answer that question.

Marketing advertising, budget

The loyalty of yesteryear, whether it be to one’s job, marriage or favorite brands, has slipped. The downsizing of the mid-1990s and today in the 2008 has hit middle management as well as hourly workers, causing increased discomfort and distrust of many large corporations. It has also changed the way that many people who have not been displaced have come to regard their job. Similarly, today’s divorce rate has a ripple effect on how secure and loyal Americans feel.

Perhaps nowhere is the trend so noticeable as brand loyalty. In a 1975 survey 74% of women and 80% of men indicated that they tried to stick with well-know brands. A decade later those percentages had dropped to 58% for women and 52% for men. According to the Roper Starch polling organization, by 1993 less than half of consumers knew what packaged-good brand they would choose when they entered a store to make such a purchase.

Loyalty Campaigns.

Promotional Products, brand awareness brand awareness, brand loyalty

Andrews Promotional Products just launched their new website.  They have a Promotional Product Blog, and some great articles on how to best motivate your employees through the effective use of Promotional Products.

Promotional Products Andrews, Promotional Products

After reading my post on measurable marketing results, Jeremy a friend and owner of RED GREY Concepts a Seattle Video Production Company sent an article from the Atlas Institute about sponsored search.

60% of people click on search results based on brand recognition.  The best example of this is when people type the title of a book into Google.  Several Sponsored sites pop up, even if Amazon is low on the list they get more of the clicks.

This can be good or bad.  take for instance when someone enters amazon into Google.  The top Pay-Per-Click ad that pops up is Amazon.  The searcher clicks this and Amazon is charged the $2 or whatever the going rate is.

How does this relate to you?  If your customers already have your name on top of mind awareness they are more likely to find you in the maze of search results.  Not everyone is a household name like Amazon.

What are you doing to stay on the top of your customers mind?  Better they recognize your name over your competitions.

If your interested in that atlas article you can find it here.

Marketing, ROI, Search, brand awareness brand awareness, Marketing, PPC, Search