10 Reasons Custom Promo Items Should Be in Your Marketing Strategy

If you’re considering custom promo items, but you’re unsure the reasons they should be in your marketing strategy, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll discuss 10 reasons custom promo items should be in your marketing strategy.

So the scenario goes…

You’ve started your business and you’re looking to get more leads and sales coming to you.  You’re looking all over the internet, studying your competitors, and watching other great entrepreneurs to see what they do.  Then, you start noticing a common trend: other businesses are giving out business cards, going to events, handing out custom branded items, driving in cars that are wrapped or have decals, and it’s generating buzz for them.  You decide to go back to the drawing board and revamp your marketing strategy, but you get confused about how custom promo items should fit into the mix.

Should they replace internet marketing?

Should you spend your marketing budget on social media or custom promo items?

Could a billboard help at this stage?

Will custom promo items bring more traffic to your company website?

The questions keep flowing and flowing, and it seems like your brain is going to POP.  Your exploding with questions that are unanswered, and that’s quite common for people who are new to promotional product advertising.  They don’t know what key performance indicators can be impacted by custom promo items, how to strategically place them in a campaign to get a high ROI, or how they fit into a marketing strategy, which is why I’m writing this article.

Why You Should Do a Periodic Assessment

If you don’t currently do it, it’s helpful to sit down from time to time and do a situation analysis.  In it, you want to analyze your current situation: your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  If you find that you are weak in marketing, others are marketing better than you, or you have more untapped opportunities in marketing, it’s time to revamp your marketing strategy.

Your marketing plan can consist of several different tactics that help you reach and serve customers, and it’s helpful to have more than one stream of traffic. Some examples of traffic sources for businesses are:

• Brochures
• Door to Door marketing
• Direct Sales
• Cold emailing
• Vendor Events
• Networking Events
• a Blog or Company Website
• Print Media
• Broadcast Media
• Online Advertising
• Direct Mail
• Email Marketing
• Public Relations
• Sampling
• or, Custom Promo Items

You can begin with one or two tactics and scale your marketing plan to deeply penetrate the market and increase your market share.

Why Custom Promo Items Should be in your Marketing Strategy

Custom promo items are any product that is printed with your branding on it.  They can include business cards, t-shirts, decals, uniforms, billboards, retractable banners, magnets, etc.  There are literally millions of custom promo items, so you can deliver brand messages by choosing a good product to help with your campaigns, and we help with that.  They can fit into your marketing strategy as your main marketing tactic, or they can serve as one of the many marketing tactics you decide to use: it’s up to you.

Many businesses use custom promo items for one of the following reasons…

1. Low-Cost Effective Marketing

While the average cost of an internet marketing campaign on Google or Facebook is approximately $0.50 per click, custom promo items can be as low as $0.01 per parcel!  Something like a business card can be handed out to your target audience for very cheap, it can connect a face with your brand, it’s personal, and people will remember that.

2. Can Help With Lead Tracking

When you do campaigns like press releases, radio advertising, or television advertising, it can be very difficult to track your conversion rates.  The traffic may spike, but you might be unsure whether the traffic came from the radio ad you just did, or whether it came from a viral social media post.

You can’t know what’s working in your marketing strategy without measurable ways of seeing what works.  For this reason, may people love Google Adwords, Facebook ads, or Bing Ads because they tell you how much you’ll pay per click, what your conversion rate is, and you can easily measure your customer acquisition cost.

What most people don’t know is they can pair a public relations campaign with custom promo items to track where their leads are coming from.  For example, in a radio campaign, you could say “Give us a call. The 100th caller that calls and says “(whatever campaign message) wins (custom promo item)”.

Pairing custom promo items with public relations can help you to clearly see where your leads are coming from.

3. Builds Your Brand Reputation

Added to lead tracking benefits, custom promo items help to build your brand reputation.  People attach virtues to your brand because they think you’re:

• Generous
• Thoughtful
• Creative
• Professional
• and, other virtues can be added to how other people think of your brand

When people associate positive virtues to your brand, it builds trust and influences buying decisions as a result.

4. Greater Business Exposure

Custom promo items can be used to leverage strategic partnerships, they can work in your absence, and when their usable, people can share them with multiple recipients.  In fact, stats show:

• Bags generate an average of 6000 impressions!
• Writing utensils cost an average of 1/10 of a cent for impressions, which makes them tie as one of the lowest cost per impression promotional products.
• Consumers hang on to promotional products for an average of 6.6 months.

Keeping with the stats, custom promo items can drastically improve your business exposure.

5. Works as a Business Card

Custom promo items can help customers to stay reminded of your name, phone number, email address, website, and whatever information you want them to have.  When you give them custom promo items, it can help them to easily access your information when they most need it.

6. Puts You in Control

Some marketing methods are completely out of your control.  For example, with search engine optimization, you can publish articles three or four time daily, but it’s up to Google to index them and serve them to their customers (the search engine users).

Similarly, with Facebook advertising, you can design a nice ad and target the right audience, but Facebook can disapprove your ad. With custom promo items, you can distribute direct to the consumer and give them in the amounts you want, when you want, and make the direct impact you want.  Nothing holds you back from making connections with your customer when you apply direct marketing.

7. Improves Company Culture

Employees and customers love to feel:

• Like they’re a part of something
• Like they’re appreciated
• Like someone is counting on them

When you give custom promo items, you can show employees or customers you appreciate them, you can host award ceremonies or send simple “thank you” emails, or you can incentivize behaviors that benefit the business, and show you’re counting on them.

8. Builds a Tangible Relationship

With the growing number of virtual businesses, many customers are establishing more and more intangible relationships.  Naturally, as humans, we’re social beings with a desire for connection.  With computers in the middle, it can sometimes interfere with the connection we make with other people.  Custom promo items can help to make the virtual relationship become also tangible.

9. Recipients Appreciate this Form of Advertising

Most forms of advertising are seen as interruptions.  When you are on Facebook and the “sponsored post” pops up on your screen, do you often say, “I’m so glad the ad popped up?”, or are you scrolling past to get it out of the way?  Unlike sponsored ads in the newspaper or on the internet, custom promo items are accepted and seen as appreciated gifts: a whole new dynamic than other forms of advertising.

10. Normal Use Items can Become Tax Deductible

Added to all of the other benefits, custom promo items can make items you normally use, become a tax deduction.  Whether sticky notes, screwdrivers, or other supplies, you can purchase them with your brand on it, and it becomes a form of advertising, a part of your marketing budget, a business expense, and a tax write off!  Even your clothes can be a tax write off.

Looking for a Custom Promo Item Vendor? Here’s my Recommendations…

1. Zazzle – Zazzle has tens of thousands of products that can be made custom for your campaign. You can use them for personal or business items and their products are sure to wow people who see them. Check out their website to see what I mean or take a look at my full Zazzle review.
2. Deluxe – Deluxe has been in the industry for well over 100 years and they’ve expanded their line of products to offer so many neat options. You can get wearables, office supplies, or electronics custom with your brand on them. Check out their website or take a look at my Deluxe review.

Final Words on Why Custom Promo Items Should Be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

The goal of this article was to show you reasons why you should consider custom promo items as a valuable part of your marketing strategy. If you have questions or concerns about this, don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments section.  I’d love to help you out!  

If you want to grow a business, check out my free e-course. It’s a framework to grow a business: from idea to enterprise. Check out my free e-course here.

Now, it’s Your Turn…

Have you used custom promo items? What was your experience? Have you seen custom promo items used? What did you notice as a result?