Magellan Promotions Insights to the World of Promotional Products

The Subtle Endorsement

There are numerous benefits to using promotional products as a means to building your brand awareness and business.  Recently we have discussed how promotional products are a tangible and appreciated form of advertising and how they double as a useful product.  Today we want to discuss another unique attribute of promotional products; they are an implied endorsement for your company.

When you hand a promotional product to a client or prospect, it bears your name and logo.  So when the recipient is seen using your promotional product, they are providing you an implied endorsement.  The logical thinking is that the person using your promotional product has a positive feeling about your company because they would not want to use or be seen wearing a polo, using a pen or have a mouse pad from an organization that they are not fond of.  So when you give a imprinted leather padfolio to the president of one of your clients, not only are you providing a tangible, appreciated and useful product, but when they are seen using it, they are providing your company an implied endorsement. 

The best thing about these endorsements is that they are relatively inexpensive.  Unlike athletes like Tiger Woods, you do not have to pay someone to endorse your company.  All you need to do is provide promotional products to your clients and prospects and your endorsements will grow!

Views or opinions on this subject?  Please let us know by using the Comment Section below. 

Michael Wolaver - Owner of Magellan Promotions. 

5 Suggestions For Successful Leave Behinds

As we have discussed numerous times, promotional products are a unique advertising medium since it is three dimensional marketing.  Unlike all other forms of advertising, you can feel, touch and use a promotional product.  Promotional products can be found in thousands of places, including on a clients desk or in a prospects kitchen.  We believe an underused application of promotional products is using them as leave behinds after meetings with clients and prospects.   

So today we are going to focus on leave behinds for business to business meetings.  Businesses that cater to consumers can also effectively use promotional products as leave behinds, but they require a different set of suggestions. 

When you meet with a client or a prospect, providing a promotional product as a leave behind item can create a positive long lasting impression.  During a meeting, many times salespeople will provide literature on their company.  However if this is all you do, the client/prospect will likely file the literature away and your company will no longer be top of mind.  However if you provide your client with a promotional product during the meeting, this product has a chance of being seen on a regular basis for years to come.  Not only does the promotional product remind your client/prospect of your company on a continual basis, it is a tangible gift that can build goodwill towards your company.  Leave behinds are an effective and inexpensive marketing strategy to build a relationship with a client and prospect.     

So to help you with picking out a leave behind for your business to business meetings, we have come up with five suggestions.

1. Make it Office Friendly – The best leave behinds are items that the clients can use in the office and not take home.  A popular leave behind are pens since everyone uses them and they are relatively inexpensive.  If you use a pen, make it unique so that it is remembered and used.  We have been handing out a pen for the past year as a leave behind from 3M that has a storage spot in the back for mini sticky flags.  These flags are perfect for putting in catalogs to mark pages.  So as we show our clients products in catalogs, we give them this pen and mark the pages with the products that they like with the flags. By the way, Oprah just highlighted this product on her show this week!  Look at this link to see what she said;

http://www.oprah.com/tows/slide/200801/20080115/slide_20080115_350_113.jhtml

2. Desk Items – Handing out a desk item is the gold standard for leave behinds because it will be seen everyday by its recipient.  The numerous desk options include staplers, coasters, mouse pads, note holders and photo frames.  This is an area where you need to consider who you mainly call on when picking out the item.  A fun, brighted colored stapler might work well for a secretary but probably would not be an appropriate item on an executive VPs desk.        

3. Upgrade the Product – One effective leave behind strategy is to provide a product that will be an upgrade from the product your client/prospect is currently using.  One of our favorite leave behinds are high quality rulers because most people just use an inexpensive ruler from the supply closet or one that came with the desk.  So when you provide a nice ruler, your product will likely replace the one that they are currently using.

4. Be unique – Try to provide an item that has a different spin on an existing product or is a new idea.  Often times the client will get a kick out of the product because they have not seen it.  Since they have not seen it, they do not have one and will likely use it.  One example of a unique item are sticky note holders for the desk.  Almost everyone uses sticky notes but do not have a home for the pad on the desk.  So when you give a custom imprinted sticky note holder to your client, you have provided a product that they can use and is unique.   

5. Don’t Be Cheap – If you provide a client with a product that will not hold up, it affects you in two ways.  First, the product will not have the lasting effect you want it to have.  Second, promotional products reflect your image since they bear your name and logo.  If you hand out a product and it does not hold up, what does that say about your company’s commitment to quality?  So when you are selecting a leave behind item, make sure to take into consideration the workmanship of the product.   

As always, we are here to help with suggestions and ideas to help with leave behind promotional products for your company. 

Business Builders

When I started in this industry, I learned a lot of different terms for promotional products, such as trinkets and trash, tchotchkes, and doodads.  However, I never thought these names took promotional products seriously enough, so I began to use the term business builders. I firmly believe that the use of promotional products plays a key role in building a company and brand.

A good marketing campaign can be described as a wheel with many spokes.  The wheel represents the company and the spokes represent the many ways that the company can  reach its audience, including television, newspaper, magazines, internet, radio, billboards, referrals, cold calling, and promotional products. 

Using promotional products is a unique medium for marketing your company because of the distinct features that they offer:

1.     Tangible and appreciated advertising. No other form of marketing provides a tangible product that your clients and prospects can use on an everyday basis.  When you give clients a nice pen, not only do they see your name and website every time they use it, they thank you for giving it to them! 

2.     Implied Endorsement. When other forms of advertising need an endorsement, they have to pay a celebrity, athlete, or an actor.  When your client wears a polo shirt with your company name on it, he or she is providing an implied endorsement, telling the world that someone thinks highly enough of your company to be seen wearing or using a product that has your name on it.  If  clients were unhappy with your company, they certainly would not be using a product that has your company name on it.  Best of all, you do not have to pay for this endorsement!

3.     Utility. Other than newspaper advertising—which can be used to start camp fires—no other form of marketing has a life beyond the ad itself.  One of the great benefits of using promotional products to build business is that they are useful.  You not only are advertising your company directly to someone you want to turn into a client, you are also providing  a product that they can use.         

4.     Extended ad life. With traditional advertising, once an ad runs in the paper, or a commercial airs on radio or television, that’s it. The only way your prospects and clients will see the ad again is for you to spend the money on repeated placements.  However, by using promotional products, you ensure that your message will stay in front of your client for years to come.

5.     Goodwill. Traditional advertising rarely builds good will with your clients. No one ever says, “Thank you for marketing to me.” This is not true for when you build business with promotional products!  When you give sleeves of Titleist Pro V1 golf balls imprinted with your name and logo to your golfer clients, they thank you for the product. This creates goodwill towards your company. 

6.     Targeted and measurable capabilities. With most advertising, the ad goes to a very wide audience. Only a small percentage of the people who will see your ad are your target market. In order to make sure your message gets through to the people you want to reach, you have to run the advertisement over and over. But if you use promotional products, you can specifically target the audience you want to reach. You can send a product to the exact person you want to get in front of…and you will not have to repeat yourself several times to get their attention; the product does this for you! Because you are able to pick and choose who receives your promotional product, you can easily track and measure the results of the marketing campaign.

Promotional products are not the only component of a solid marketing campaign, but they are solid spokes in the wheel of marketing and offer unique advantages that other forms of advertising cannot duplicate.   

To learn more about Identity Promotions, please contact us at 414.831.0814 or view our website at www.identity-promo.com.