As a business owner, it’s often difficult to know where to focus marketing efforts and how to spend marketing dollars. With an audience that seems to have an ever-shrinking attention span, how can one genuinely engage a target demographic to share a specific message? While there are countless media options available, the promotional product stands
above all other advertising mediums when it comes to captivating and moving an audience to action.
Although there are many reasons that the use of promotional merchandise to support other marketing efforts is invaluable, four key advantages truly capture the value.
Tangible
People like to receive promotional products. Have you ever been to a sporting event and witnessed how people react to a cannon shooting out T-shirts emblazoned with the team logo and a co-sponsor? Even Sir Paul McCartney went wild over the prospect of getting a Brooklyn Nets T-shirt, as evidenced by this video. If a promotional product has that type of an impact on a Beatle, think about how your audience will feel.
Control
With a radio spot, a full-page spread in a magazine, or even an internet pop-up ad, there is no way to ensure that your target audience is receiving the message, let alone engaging with it. However, because you target each recipient with promotional merchandise, the impact is far more easily measured because you control when, who, and how the merchandise is delivered.
Recollection
Client recall after receiving a promotional product is astounding. In a recent Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) study, 88 percent of consumers recalled the advertiser’s name from a promotional product they received in the previous 12 months. When you compare that to the fact that only 71 percent of consumers recalled advertisers in a newspaper/magazine read the week before, the power of promotional products to support brand awareness is evident.
Delight
From the smile on the recipient’s face to the sincere expression of gratitude, you can immediately sense the joy a person receives when accepting a promotional product. There is no other form of advertising where people are not only excited to receive it but will thank and remember you for giving it to them. Any time you create delight with your clients you differentiate yourself, your company, and your brand from the competition.
Promotional products have a dramatically positive impact on both client attitudes and brand recall. They give you absolute control of your marketing spend and, more than anything else, create delight in the recipient’s heart.
If you’re still unsure of the viability of promotional marketing in the digital age, we have a challenge for you: open your linen closet at home and look at your beach towels. At Payden & Associates, we have no doubt that each person reading this blog will have a promotional towel that may be ten years old or older. You kept it because it was useful, and who doesn’t love a great beach towel? We would also wager that you knew the advertiser’s name on that towel without physically going to your collection.
