Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Broadcasting Your Brand Name With Promotional Gifts

By Alexander Calvin

You may have several different motivations for choosing to include promotional gifts as part of your marketing plan. You may be introducing a new product, or thanking customers for support, or even motivating your staff. Whatever the reason, you can't go wrong with promotional merchandise as gifts. Tradeshows are likely the best venues to distribute the gifts in large quantities. There they are always well received by the audiences.

Which item to select as a promotional gift is a bit complex. Here, a number of factors come into play. Your industry, your area of service, your clientele, geographical area where you do business are some of the basic considerations that determine the selection. However, the most important determinant is usability. In other words, it has repeatedly been observed that that usable items as promotional items have scored higher than promotional items that look good but are not useful. In other words, the value that you deliver through your promotional items matters.

Promotional pens are a good choice for distributing and are most likely the widely used corporate gift today. They can be purchased in a variety of materials and styles, some may have lights, some may have other attractive features. But make sure the pens you purchase are the best quality pens you can afford. You don't want your company to be remembered as the one which distributed pens that ran out of ink in a week.

Promotional mouse mats are a more innovative gift, not as common as pens, but which can serve as an excellent tool for brand awareness. They have the advantage of a larger area to display your marketing message and they are more target oriented than pens. Pens can be distributed to virtually everybody, but mouse mats must be given to computer users only, and that may be an advantage if that demographic fits with your marketing campaign.

Whichever promotional gift you choose do distribute, make sure it is pertinent and appropriate for the clients you are giving it to. Not everyone can use a mouse mat, so be aware of that, unless virtually all of your audience operates computers. The whole concept of giving promotional merchandise is to say thank you to your customers. If you give them something that is useless, your money will have been wasted.

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