4 Mistakes to Avoid with your Promotional Products
When it comes to launching a new product and promoting your brand, there are a few simple steps that can make the difference between a successful campaign and one that completely flops (or worst, loses your business a serious amount of cash)...
You might have perfected your email strategy and booked yourself in at every industry event possible, but how much have you thought about the items you're letting potential customers walk away with? Here are four common pitfalls to avoid.
1. Choosing the wrong promotional product
Good promotional products don't just find their way into the homes and hands of your target consumer; they provide a return on your investment. Their purpose should be to boost the reach and recognition of your brand, generating new enquiries long-term. However, if you're plying your leads with pointless junk, it's going to end up in the bin – so choose the items you use wisely.
Good promotional products should be:
- Tailored to your audience
- Designed with a clear objective
- Relevant to your business
- Attractive, so people want to keep them
- Functional and (relatively) evergreen
- Cost-effective per lead
Carry out some basic market research into the demographics of your customers and potential customers to help you get this right. You should also look into how certain consumers respond to different trends. For example, women between 18 and 24 are more likely to use branded bags, while promotional outerwear is more commonly used by men. We recently featured a post about beer festival paraphernalia, which should give you some ideas.
2. Not providing samples
If you're having trouble working out what the most appropriate thing to give to your potential customers, make sure you're not overlooking the obvious; your product itself. You don't need a huge marketing and branding budget if the thing you're selling is genuinely valuable – you just need to get it into the right hands.
This is particularly relevant for food and drink, as well as beauty tools and skincare products – but it can work well for other industries too. It demonstrates a confidence in your product's ability to perform in an unknown environment and shows that, as a company, you're happy to be a little generous from time to time. There's also the added bonus that you might get feedback that you can use in promotional materials or as a way of honing your product.
Remember that you don't have to give away full-sized versions of your product. Carefully budget how much you can give away for free (based on average returns) and speak to a supplier that can provide sample-sized containers. For example, The Bag Broker offers small pouches that are manufactured to international food grade, and Ideon specialises in mini containers for all kinds of cosmetics. Oh, and we can brand them for you, too!
3. Leaving things until the last minute
When you're choosing a partner to help you produce and deliver promotional products, you'll find a lot of companies offer superfast turnaround as an incentive to use them. While this might be a perk for future orders, you should never rely on this for your first batch of new promotional merchandise and tools.
Always plan, design and order your products with ample time to proof the concept and order a prototype. Rushing the process can easily result in spelling mistakes, incorrect colour choices or simply bad designs, which can be very expensive if your products are then unprofessional and unusable. Save yourself a lot of money and frustration by taking your time and choosing a company with a reputation for quality – not haste.
4. Giving freebies to everyone
Maybe you're so proud of your product that you want to share it with everyone you see, or perhaps you just hate saying "no" when people ask. If you've worked hard and planned it carefully, your promotional products should be desirable. However, just because crowds of people are attracted to your stall, shopfront or homepage doesn't mean you have to let everyone have an equal piece of your pie.
Consider creating a tier system when it comes to what you're giving away, differentiating the people who just want a freebie from those who will actually provide a return on your investment (either by purchasing something or giving you greater exposure). Those with the greatest reach, spending power and likelihood of buying from you deserve more of your time and effort than the people that will take your stuff and never return.
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