Promotional Giveaways Are One Of The Best Forms Of PR

Marketers and entrepreneurs today have a plethora of options available to them to shout about their wares; media, billboards, e-marketing, printed merchandise and so on and so forth. Each of them has their merits and shortfalls and marketers will often combine these channels to the degree they feel will afford them the greatest visibility. A good number are today opting for branded giveaways as their primary marketing strategy due to their affordability and longevity among other advantages.

But why should I join them, you ask? Your aim as ever is to create awareness of either your brand or products. Printed merchandise will achieve this for you in a variety of ways.

For starters, you could start by dishing out some branded goodies to your own staff. This will serve to kill two birds with one stone; show your workers appreciation and make your brand a household name. Even if they bear the company colours and logo, the recipients of the gifts will appreciate you remembering them and you might even see an increase in productivity as a result. This is why you need to lavish them on your sales staff! The giveaways which your staff take home, depending on how practical or fun they are, will also be seen by members of the household as well as guests. This is marketing. And the beauty is that as long as that promotional mug, or whatever it was you gave them, remains intact and in use, it will continue to make a racket about your company.

Have you ever been at a trade show and seen attendees ignoring one desk and flocking to another exhibitor? Well the difference could have been that while one of them was simply selling his company’s products, the other probably had a pile of promotional gifts that they handed out to visitors. There are few people who don’t like free things so putting such gifts on your desk is a sure-fire way of drawing traffic to your table. What the recipients of your printed-on caps and tee shirts don’t know is that you are making a walking billboard out of them. As they go about their business, people will see your logo and whatever message you had put on the shirt. This is arguably more effective than the stationary billboards put on the roadside that drivers zoom past and pedestrians pass without paying too much attention.

Unlike media advertisements that are seen by every Tom, Dick and Harry who may have no interest in them, printed merchandise allows you to zero in more tightly on your preferred market segment. If, for instance, you want to reinforce brand loyalty among your customers or inform them of a new range of products you can post promotional mouse mats to only those who have made repeat purchases. If you are targeting a young female audience, you can have those promotional bags done in light pink to further endear them to your target. And of course the fact that you are giving away something for ‘free’ gives the public the impression of a caring, generous business (like us ;0). These are just a few reasons why promotional giveaways are one of the best ways of making a racket about your brand.