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how tomaximiseyour efforts

by marketing withpromotional

items

in this guide you will find ways to maximise the return from promotional items, a easy 5-setp process to plan a successful campaigns, insider tips, a checklist of campaign objectives and case studies to inspire you.

Staff want to belong to a firm

that respects them.

Staff want to know that you are there for them beyond their job

role/function.

Provide gifts that build your brand outside the

workplace.

It is what it’s all about. Send a gift to your clients that speaks volumes about

your appreciation of their business.

Sending out promotional items is just like placing a full-cover advertisement in a magazine or a full-page ad in a newspaper; only, it’s better. Your customers would unpack them, hold them, and use them even. Unfortunately, however, customers have very short attention spans along with the fact that they are bombarded with plenty of messages every day.

You’ve got to stand out. How? You need to send your promotional items more often, again and again. That way, there’s brand recognition. Just don’t overdo it. Figuring out just the right number of times to send promotional merchandise like promotional bags, stationery, and other such items helps you create the right relationship with your clients.

Promotional items such as bags have precious real estate on the sides, for instance. Don’t leave these spaces blank. Go ahead and use great, persuasive copy that connects with your customers using natural emotional triggers such as fear, the need to feel special, etc.

Without this connect, they would never establish trust with you, which in turn would rarely cause a sale to happen.

Connect with your customers

Not all business models need promotional merchandise for marketing. If it’s a B2B business, you must take care not to overdo this method of marketing. You’d do better with a classy way of merchandise marketing such as corporate gifting but even that should be approached with caution.

B2C businesses, on the other hand, would be great for such forms of marketing. Hence, it’s important to gauge from your customers’ point of view and then decide if you even want to do it in the first place.

Sending out promotional items helps you do one thing well with your customers: enhance brand recall. When you distribute little, inexpensive, and highly relevant items like pretty promotional bags for ladies, wallets for gents, toys for kids, etc., you help customers remember your brand.

When you keep sending or distributing such items, your customers will love you for it. Love is a great emotion and it helps your brand stick. All you have to do is to send relevant items, and send them frequently enough to make an impact.

Distribute promotional items

only if they make sense

Enhance brand recall

Send one; send more than once

here are ways to maximise your efforts when marketing your business with promotional items:

Corporate gifts, giving things away for free, sending out promotional material, and marketing with little promotional items are all great ways to market your business. Since it can be quite an investment, you’d want to make the most out of your spending while dealing with promotional materials.

Bladon WA – How to Maximise Your Efforts by Marketing With Promotional Items 2

The right promotional product will not only increase top of mind awareness about your brand, it will motivate people to take action. Whether you want them to call your office, meet with a sales person, visit your website, try a new product, or visit your trade show booth.

Big brands consider promotional products a significant part of the marketing mix, even when budgets are tight. Xerox, for example, always includes them in its annual budget, says Beth Ann Kilberg-Walsh, Manager, Marketing Communications at Xerox Corp.

Promotional products are important, especially during tough economic times, she says, because that’s when companies need people to take action. “We’re all so

serious these days ... you have to create some type of fun … a little bit of enticement just to make the person act,” says Kilberg-Walsh. “Everybody wants to win something; everybody wants to get something.”

Marketers need to be more strategic about how they launch campaigns involving promotional products. They should watch what they spend, whom they target, and how they maximize the ROI. All the experts we spoke to agreed that the secret to boosting leads and sales is using promotional products is to choose the RIGHT promotional product.

The following is an easy to follow 5 step process to make sure you always select the best promotional product.

easyst

eps to increase

Bladon WA presents...

sales using

the rightpromotional

product

5

Bladon WA – How to Maximise Your Efforts by Marketing With Promotional Items 3

define

define

your campaign

your

objective

campaign budget

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See page ... for a list of the more popular campaign objectives. Understand how promotional products will support your objective. It may help in catching attention, getting involvement or motivate to take action.

Beware of having too many objectives. Most effective campaigns have one single primary objective. Also, when selecting your promotional product decide whether your objective is psychological (improving brand awareness, preference) or behavioural (generating a response).

You have a number of options when setting your campaign budget. For example, it could be as a percentage sale, profit on first sale, an arbitrary figure or based on the lifetime value of your typical customer.

For example, if your objective is to generate $50,000 in your new business, don’t spend $70,000 on the promotional product campaign. Try to at least double the return on investment.

There are no absolute answers. However, you need to make sure that you’re business maximises its profit potential. You need decide whether you make money on the front end or the back end.

In addition to your deciding on your campaign objectives – make sure to also determine what metrics you’re going to use to measure your campaign success (see Step 5). Q

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Your tArgEt AuDiEnCEPromotional products must make sense for the target audience.

Once you’ve defined the demographics of the target, ask yourself: How do they spend their time? Where do they work (at a desk, on the move or both)? What would be useful or novel to them? What has worked at reaching them in the past?

Here are some promotional products that appeal to just about every audience:

• magnets: They’re functional, versatile, and easy to find when needed. “It’s not a big item to carry at a [trade] show,” says Ron Lehner, President of Total Automotive, a wholesale automotive parts company. “When [attendees] get back, they slap it on a filing cabinet and, six months later, they start thinking about our company and remember it’s on the magnet.”

• bags: They’re hot commodities, especially reusable grocery bags, because so many people use them.

• t-shirts, pens, hats, key chains, mugs, etc.

Other promotional products appeal to very specific audiences. USB flash drives, for example, appeal to techie audiences.

Your mESSAgEWhat message do you want to convey? Is it your company’s value proposition or specific features or benefits of your product?

thE promotionAl proDuCtThe hardest part is finding the appropriate three-dimensional manifestation of your message.

If the message is about keeping clients’ Web applications secure, the best promotional product might be a USB flash drive with a biometric strip.

If the message is about connecting clients with opportunity, the best promotional product might be a NERF football.

Xerox used a Rubik’s Cube to symbolize putting the pieces of a puzzle together.

consideryour campaign

variables3

tArgEt AuDiEnCE: Automotive body shops and new car dealers.

oBjECtivE: To increase sales leads for GM trucks hinge kits.

mESSAgE: Demonstration showing how to install hinge kits as proven to be one of the most effective lead generating strategies, so Lehner wanted to maximise the number of people viewing the demonstration.

promotionAl proDuCt: To maximise viewership, a low-budget instructional video was created and burnt onto a business-card-sized CD, which was then given out at trade shows.

rESult: About 50% of Total Automotive’s online leads came from the mini-CD during the months following the trade shows. “When they watch the video, they’re pretty much on board,” Lehner says. “They want to start stocking them and buying the kits.”

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start withsmall tests4

tArgEt AuDiEnCE: A list of 800 distributors who were selling some but not all 3M respirator products.

oBjECtivE: 3M wanted to increase respirator sales and build brand awareness about its complete line of 3M disposable respirator products.

StrAtEgY: An eight-part direct-mail campaign that spanned about 17 months. Each direct-mail piece contained a sample respirator and a related promotional product. One of these direct-mail

pieces consisted pf a clear piggy bankwith the following message: “We want you to breathe through your nose, not pay through the nose.”

promotionAl proDuCt: A keychain, a pair of Elvis sunglasses, and an embroidered hat were used in conjunction with the sample respirators. Each had a unique message that tied it to the sample respirator.

rESult: 20% sales increase of 3M’s entire respirator line following the launch of the promotional product campaign.

tArgEt AuDiEnCE: Attorneys who file patent applications for US companies in foreign countries.

oBjECtivE: Drive traffic to a landing page.

mESSAgE: The firm saves clients an average of about $100,000 per year in patent fees.

promotionAl proDuCt: TA fake $100 bill shaped like a man was mailed to a prospect list. The $100-bill-man had a zipper

that, when opened, revealed a business card with a phone number, the name of a representative, and a personalized URL.

Prospects were encouraged to to visit a personalized website, where they were greeted with their name and an online calculator that showed them how much money they would save with the law firm’s services.

rESult: About 11% of the recipients responded by calling the phone number or visiting the personalized website.

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Mailing out three-dimensional products can be expensive. As Lehner advises, “start out small and test to see what works. Then, when you find something that works, run with it.”

Don’t deploy your new promotional campaign to your entire target list before you’ve proven it works with a small test.

Make promotional products part of a strategic, integrated marketing plan to get measurable results.

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Bladon WA – How to Maximise Your Efforts by Marketing With Promotional Items 6

measureyour success5

tArgEt AuDiEnCE: Arby’s current customer base.

oBjECtivE: Arby’s wanted to keep customers coming back.

mESSAgE: Arby’s created a loyalty coupon program that allowed customers to sign up and get a card with a removable bar-coded keychain tag. Anyone presenting the tag got an automatic discount.

Each tag exhibited the company’s message, “I’m thinking Arby’s.”

promotionAl proDuCt: A discount card with removable keychain tag.

rESult: An Arby’s in the target area reported a 25% increase in sales directly attributed to use of the discount cards.

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You need to measure your success.

For example, create an online registration form that Web visitors must fill out to get newsletters or special product information. Lehner used this method to determine how many leads came from the mini-CD he gave out at trade shows. How did you hear about Total Automotive, Inc.?” is a required field on the company’s registration form. Registrants can choose from the

answers provided or select “other” and write their own. Or Create and distribute an email address unique to the promotion. It channels responses to one place, making it easier to measure the number of responses generated.

Don’t deploy your new promotional campaign to your entire target list before you’ve proven it works with a small test.

AwarenessThis is the first step in bringing in new customers. The potential customer must know or be reminded of your existence, your location, your product or service, your price range, and what makes you different from the competition.

building a mailing listThis involves collecting the names and addresses of all customers who walk through your door. You will use this list time and again to implement many promotional activities. Do everything you can to collect this information, and maintain and update it continually.

community goodwillThis is the creation of a positive image of your business or organization in your community. No matter how large or small your business or organization may be, you put out an image that reflects on you positively or negatively. Promotions aimed at community involvement show your genuine caring and sharing.

excitementThese are promotions that make you stand out from the crowd. Exciting promotions will create a loyal customer base.

campaign objectives checklist

Bladon WA – How to Maximise Your Efforts by Marketing With Promotional Items 7

frequencyThese are promotions geared toward establishing your business as the place to go in your category. Bringing in new customers and keeping the old ones is important, but once you have gained customers’ loyalty, the goal is to keep them coming back as often as possible.

Generating PrPublic relations, also called publicity, is an effective and inexpensive way to get your message out by getting the media (radio, television, newspapers, magazines, Web sites) interested enough in what you are doing to tell their audiences about it. Once you’ve been noticed the first time, it becomes easier to get press attention for future promotions.

Generating trafficThese promotions are designed to attract people into your operation. People may be coming in simply to pick up an entry blank for a contest, but it’s likely that they will make some purchase as a result, either then or later.

imageThis involves the perception the public has of your business. Is it a fun place to take the kids, a special occasion destination, a place the community can count on for special events, a business that makes customers feel like family? The image you have established in the community should drive the promotions you choose. If you want to change your image, choosing the proper promotions can make it easy.

increasing salesThese are promotions that are designed specifically to build a higher check (and a higher profit) per customer through the suggestive selling of add-ons or selling up

to higher-priced products or services. Many of the staff incentives you will find in this guide are also designed to increase sales.

Keeping staff busyThese are promotions that are designed to help you face slow periods. They keep your staff busy and build business during down times. Most important, they prevent you from having to lay off employees. The knowledge that you are working to help your staff keep their jobs will create staff loyalty and goodwill.

Promoting activity during slowperiods

These promotions are different from those described under “Keeping staff busy” in that they aim to build your normal and usual business during off times rather than to expand your activities and services. They can also keep your staff busy!

staff incentivesThe attitudes and actions of your employees will be the first (and possibly last) impression that customers get. A harmonious, exciting, and pleasant working environment, in which individuals’ needs are paramount, will keep your business running smoothly and leave you and your management with time to implement other promotional activities.

stimulating trialThese promotions are designed to get people to try you out. Customers who already know about you may not have been motivated to try you. Promotions that are designed to stimulate trial offer something that is special enough to give potential customers the push they need.

campaign objectives checklist (contd...)

Every day around the world, companies of all sizes, from corporate giants to small entrepreneurial firms are successfully using promotional items to increase branding awareness or boosting sales. You can too.

At Bladon, our specialty is promotional products. We source and brand any items you may need. But more importantly, because we’ve been supplying promotional items to Western

Australian businesses for over 20 years, we can help you in the planning of your promotional campaign.

If you’re not sure if promotional items are right for you, or which one would best suit your objective, call us on 9240 7900. Promotional items marketing is what we’ve been doing every day for over 20 years. W

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