Can Promotional Items Really Improve Business?

During this economy many business owners are cutting back on expenses, laying off employees and doing everything that they can to stay in business. In spite of all the cut backs that businesses are making, a business should always have some sort of marketing strategy to generate new business and one of the most affordable forms of marketing today is promotional items.

A promotional item is any type of regular, every day item that has a business name, phone number, address or website address printed on them. We’ve all been given promotional items at one point or the other in the form of t-shirts, coffee cups, calendars etc and we continue to use those items because everyone love to get something for free that will be useful to them.

Return On Investment

Promotional items offer a better return on investment or ROI than every form of advertising including television advertising. The average cost per impression of a promotional item is 0.002 cents compared to 0.019 cents for a national television commercial.

The reason why promotional items are effective is because people who use them are exposed to a merchants logo, business name, phone number, slogan and website address more often than they are to other forms of advertising like TV commercials, radio or Internet advertising.

Marketing Strategy

1. Mail out promotional items to existing customers as a thank you gifts for their business with information on any new upcoming sales or special promotions.

2. If a business has a store front location, promotional items should be given to everyone who steps foot into that store.

3. Multiple businesses in the same town should partner up and consider giving away each other’s promotional items to new visitors to their store front locations. If multiple businesses partner up they could even have their promotional items printed all at once and save money on printing costs.

4. In store raffles should be started and customers should be encouraged to fill out their name, email address and phone number. Everyone who enters will automatically win a promotional item.

5. Promotional items should be given away at live events and every other venue where that business might meet new, potential customers.

6. Unique promotional products are always better than your average T-shirt or hat.