Promotional mugs are a great way to advertise your business and products all year round. As the recipients of your mugs sip their tea or coffee, they will have the image of your brand implanted into their subconscious. That subtle influence will take effect when they hit the hypermarket to buy their personal effects and somehow feel drawn by the familiarity of your product.
More often than not they will end up taking your product home rather than a competitor’s simply because you invested in a set of mugs swathed in your company colours. It is therefore prudent to factor in such promotional goodies in your marketing budget so as to supplement your media promotion campaigns. There is a wide variety of promotional mugs you can use to reach out to your target market and so you must know what you want prior to making an order.
While it is understandable that you don’t want to splurge on outrageously priced mugs, it is important that you get mugs that stand out. These may eat out a bigger chunk of your marketing budget but the whole point of getting the mugs out there is to capture attention. It is important that you do not lose sight of that.
Go ye therefore and get something that will have the tea or coffee drinker thinking, ‘Hmmmh, what a beauty. Oh, and it’s a Company X mug? They really know their stuff’. You especially want this to be the case if you’ll be handing them out to corporate executives- be they high end clients or business partners or your own board of directors. You need to give them something they would proudly put out in front of their friends and associates. Uniquely designed china mugs with a glossy finish should be the kind you are looking for.
You could also go for the attention-grabbing ceramic mugs with a heat-sensitive coating. When hot liquid is poured into the mug, the colours on it become brighter, revealing the images on it more clearly. As the liquid cools, the colours become dull again. However, there are times you want to give away promotional mugs en masse to spread your name as far as possible on the map. This is a particularly useful way of reaching out to a new market segment or when venturing into a new geographical location. In such a case, the quality or aesthetic appeal of the mug is not really a factor, just the number of mugs you can get out.
The higher the number of mugs, the better. So you need to look for a maker of customised promotional merchandise who will give you the most competitive price in view of the quantity you are ordering. But even as you scour the list of vendors for reasonable prices, have a minimum standard of quality below which you cannot go. You can instead save by using minimal colours (most vendors charge per colour printed on the mug).
However, remember that people will still associate you with the quality of mug they have in their hand.