Marketing With Promotional Products

Promotional products are items imprinted with a logo or slogan given out to promote a company, organization, product, service, special achievement or event. They include such popular items as apparel, drinkware, writing instruments, and business accessories. Promotional products are also called advertising specialties.

Whatever the marketing message, promotional products will help you deliver it with flair and professionalism, and promotional consultants will help you make the message memorable.

There are tens of thousands of promotional products distributors – more than 22,000, in fact - according to the Advertising Specialty Institute. Often these distributors function as “order takers” who help a business acquire some specific thing that the client has heard about or seen somewhere else.

Contrast that approach with the advertising specialty consultants at Logo Concepts, a promotional products firm in Centerville, UT that is part of the national network of more than 300 Adventures in Advertising (AIA) franchised offices. These consultative sales people are not just order-takers or suppliers. They combine their creativity and experience to tailor promotional solutions to a client’s unique needs. The goal? To help their clients stand out from the competition.

Because Logo Concepts is part of the AIA network of franchises, they can offer the customer service of a local company and the pricing advantages of a national company. Logo Concepts serves businesses of all sizes by using a consultative approach that seeks to understand a client’s audience, theme, and objectives.

Logo Concepts’ ability to serve its customers is tied to AIA’s strong partnerships with 150 preferred suppliers, who are required to commit to specific performance standards including pricing, service, and support.

Whether clients want to promote their own products or services, target potential customers, or motivate employees, promotional products have proven to be an excellent way to effectively communicate a message. Advertisers spent a record $17.8 billion on promotional products in 2005, an increase of 5.1 percent over 2004 numbers. This figure represents twice the amount spent on Internet display ads, five times more than outdoor advertising, and more than cable television advertising, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

Marketing budget dedicated to promotional products is money well spent. Consider the ubiquitous logoed mug and its cost per impression (CPI), which measures the reach and frequency of an advertising message. (An “impression” is any opportunity for the message to be seen.) According to a study commissioned for AIA, mugs that stay on desks two years or more can generate 750 to 2,500 impressions a year, assuming they get somewhere between 15 and 50 impressions in a standard five-day workweek. For a $5 mug, that’s a CPI of between $.006 and $.001. A pretty good price for a personalized advertising item!

Your marketing effort may be in support of a new product you are introducing, or it may be to highlight a new corporate initiative that only your employees will see. Promotional products will help you deliver it, and promotional consultants will help you make the message memorable.

Author: Kurt A. Hills