Advertising goods are items with a logo or motto marked and sold to advertise a brand, company name, or event at little or no expense. These products are given away or sold to promote a company, corporate image, brand, or event. They are typically distributed at trade shows, conventions, on sales calls, and as bonus items. Also, these goods are often used in guerrilla marketing campaigns.
• Promotional merchandise: what you should know
• Why Is It Necessary for Your Company?
• Low-Cost Effective Marketing
• The Most Effective Promotional Items
• Pepsilindros (the combination of the names Pepsi and cylinders)
• Your promotional merchandise should always have a call to action.
Promotional merchandise: what you should know
As well as retail marketing, promotional merchandise involves a well thought marketing strategy. These are regularly introduced at trade shows, seminars, sales calls, and as bonus products on shipped orders.
How does it work?
Typically, companies and corporations buy their products primarily from distributors of promotional goods. Such distributors are known as promotional consultants. These professionals have the expertise to take the product to market and to provide full assistance in processing orders, artwork & delivery of promotional merchandise from diverse manufacturing sources that include plastic injection molding.
Almost anything can be advertised using a business name or logo. These uses may include employee relations and events, tradeshow traffic-building, public relations, new customer generation, dealer-distributor programs, new product introductions, employee awards, non-profit programs, internal incentive programs, safety education, customer referrals, marketing research, and non-profit organizations.
This merchandise is also used in politics to promote candidates and causes. Environmentally friendly consumer items such as recycled materials and renewable resources have gained tremendous success.
Why Is It Necessary for Your Company?
Industries need to develop new ways to promote their business and benefit from making an impact and make profits. Here are the top reasons why it is essential for any business.
Direct Increase in Sales
The direct sales of companies employing merchandising have increased considerably. Total sales and average revenue per customer are affected. Increasing sales in several ways of successful merchandising will include:
Up-selling-This ensures that consumers are allowed to buy premium versions of various products they need.
- Cross-selling-This applies to the sale of goods from several divisions that are well integrated
- Encouraging impulse purchases
Low-Cost Effective Marketing
Most promotional merchandise will sell for a low or affordable price, but they always have a significant impact on the customers. This is a great way to gain clients a fraction of the cost.
Instant Brand Recognition
If you send out company goods that can be used regularly or kept for a more extended time, you can get the maximum exposure. Thus, for a long period, your customers will remember their company.
Creates Brand Loyalists
Upon obtaining a promotional offer, 85 percent of customers do business with a company. 89% of the people who received promotional merchandise in the past 24 months remember the name of the company.
Greater Business Exposure
To get a better result, use brand merchandising the right way. Be sure your brand has a good foundation since nobody will want to advertise your brand if they don't agree with your quality, efficiency, and values. Knowing who is your target will prevent you from spending time and money on items that are not worth it. Stay away from trendy items, since these can go out of style fast.
The Most Effective Promotional Items
Building your business into a brand depends on repeating impressions. The more people see a company logo, the quicker they start acknowledging a brand, which contributes to trust and sales.
We can categorize the key factors to make popular your promotional merchandise: High-staying power, Usefulness, and Number of impressions. Based on this, the following products have proven to be the most popular due to their effectiveness:
- Promotional Drinkware
- Logo Writing Instruments
- Custom Desk Accessories
- Koozies
- Stress balls
- Sunglasses
- Frisbees
- Hand sanitizer
- Pens
- Beach ball
- Flashlight keychains
- Drawstring backpacks
We can help you to know which product suits you the best.
Successful cases
Some promotional merchandise becomes so successful; they became icons of pop culture. Here we mention some.
Pepcilindros (the combination of the names Pepsi and cylinders)
These became very famous because they were not just a simple thermos with boring design, but they were decorated with the Looney Toons, fashionable at that time, and it was effortless to get them. The collection consisted of 5 different glasses.
Sabrimágicos
The success of this promotion was its "magic" technology, as the glasses responded to cold or heat by changing color. There were five different models to each day of the week and changed color.
Some selected Sabritas products included Tiny Toons' prints. You had to collect five and go to the exchange centers to get yours.
Sabritazos
These are round circular disks distributed as promotional items with products of Frito-Lay and its subsidiaries around the world. The concept behind Tazos was like Pogs, with each Tazo having a score, and a game was played to "win" Tazos from other players. Tazos were produced in various formats from the original circular disks to the octagonal ones. Tazos are commonly made from a plastic base, but some series have been made of cardboard or aluminum.
Happy Meal toy
One of the most successful cases. A toy that became a plus in a fast-food meal for kids. While they were initially cheap items such as a Frisbee or ball, they have gradually been replaced with increasingly sophisticated toys, many of which are a tie-in to an existing TV series, film, video game, or toy line. Due to its sales success, these pieces became collector's items. Toys option is, undoubtedly, an ingenious way to reach your clients.
LIVESTRONG
This was a famous yellow wristband released in 2004 by Lance Armstrong's cancer-fighting Livestrong charity. They were bright, cheap ($1), and supported a good cause. They were also super trendy. Within months the bracelets were everywhere.
Deliveroo
Deliveroo is a mobile application to order food at home. Thanks to its communication and marketing campaigns, in the last year, it has experienced a big success. Social networks have been a great help to reach their target customers, and they have not hesitated to give away advertising items with their corporate logo to create branding and improve their positioning.
Ambar beer
The Ambar beer of Spain was looking for a new image. With the excuse of looking for tasters for their new beer, they created a wooden case with different products of their own, a glass, and a diary marked with their logo. In addition to choosing various participants, the company selected some influencers and offered them the same wooden box personalized with their name.
Calculating costs
Price is always relative because it depends on many factors that should cover your needs, targets, volume, etc. That's why it is still easier to start from the main factor: your budget. Entrepreneur Magazine suggests that businesses with less than five years of experience use 12 to 20 percent of their revenue for marketing, with more experienced companies using 6 to 12 percent. Event marketing usually consumes ≤ 20% of the marketing budget.
Also, the Promotional merchandise Association International researched the impact budget has on marketers. In their study, 34% of respondents said that the budget was the most important thing they had to consider. The price of goods can vary from 10 cents to over $1000 for consumers. Promotional goods' average cost is about $1. The cost per impression is 3 cents, so that each perception of your brand, logo, or message created will cost your client only 3 cents. This is the best return for their advertising and marketing investment that is possible.
Facts about ROI
One dilemma that all marketers face is the question of Return on Investment (ROI) and the rationale for spending on some form of advertising. It doesn't seem very easy to measure a definitive ROI, but that does not mean it is not possible.
The costs of promotion and incremental sales revenues should be calculated to determine the ROI. If the promotion made three times more margin than its expenses, then the ROI would be 3. However, simple maths are not a simple answer for us.
Your promotional merchandise should always have a call to action.
A phone number and/or a web site address. Apart from the calculation, the contact details should always be within the product; otherwise, the ROI will not be very high. By creating a unique landing page, then analytics software will tell you the number of visitors you receive. If the landing page for the promotion has an 'Order Here' or 'Contact me' button, one can see the number of those taking action.
The other way to achieve the objective is to create a whole new web domain, and analytics can measure the unique traffic. If your customers buy directly from your website, then you have a measure of incremental sales. If they do not, then you will need to assume the conversion rate of this traffic to be the same as your standard conversion rate to get an incremental sales figure.
A/B split testing
A/B split testing is a concept familiar to most marketers and used in several areas, not just promotional goods. This is fine if you have two geographic regions or routes to market that you can A/B split test – but for many, this is difficult. The other way is to look at the cost of impressions.
Cost of Impressions
The other way to measure the return on investment is to look at the expense of impression – the value of the brand seen per person. In comparison to other forms of advertising, promotional merchandise score well here, not least of which because according to the PPAI, 26% of promotional goods are passed on to someone else. The PPAI did some major surveys looking at the frequency of use and exposure and calculated the cost per impression of about £0.005.
Still not convinced? Let’s check the statistics
The positive results of branded merchandise speak for itself:
- 71% of users reported remembering having received a free brand promo in the last year. Over a third of them had these items currently with them.
- 76% of people surveyed remember the name of the company that gave them the free promo.
- By contrast, only about half of the population could recall the name of a company that had run a print ad last week.
- 52% of people spent money with the brand that gave them their promo item
- 52% of people also had a more favorable opinion of the company that offered them a branded giveaway
- 79% said they were likely to do business with the brand again in the future
- 87% of people surveyed kept the promo item for more than a year!
To learn more about product merchandising, we can help you to get your best option.
REFERENCES:
[1] Livestrong Bracelets: Lance Armstrong's Greatest Gift To Fashion (PHOTOS)
[2] Tazos
[3] What to Include in Your Promotional Products Budget
[4] Promotional Products Have Huge ROI for Brand Recognition
[5] MEASURING THE ROI ON PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS
[6] 5 REASONS WHY PRODUCTS MERCHANDISE ARE IMPORTANT FOR YOUR COMPANY
[7] Top 8 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Branded Merchandise
[8] What Are the Most Popular Promotional Items? [Infographic]
[9] THE MOST EFFECTIVE PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS UNDER $1
[10] Costs & Margins of Promotional Products
[12] Pepsilindros y Sabrimágicos, promociones exitosas de los 90´s (Spanish)
[13] Pepsilindros, sabrimágicos y tazos, las promociones más exitosa de los 90's (Spanish)
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