subject: Promotional Giveaways That Keep On Giving [print this page] Promotional Giveaways That Keep On Giving
One of the most effective promotional giveaways is the useful promotional product. It's not a throwaway, and it has real practical uses. This is a type of positive reinforcement, and it can extend over a whole range of promotional products. Interestingly, some of these products are so popular that customers often make a point of asking for them. Just about everybody accumulates a few, and many people have actual collections of these products.
The ultra useful promotional product
The highest value promotional products are those with a long product life. These can be anything from binoculars to luggage. They're useful items which have a range of uses in the home or office. The functional element is what separates them from the purely decorative types of promotional products.
Their value as promotional items is based on their long term presence and positive image. These factors give them a higher perceived value, which translates into a more effective image of the promotion. This is a form of "passive selling", and also upgrades the image of the promotion.
Tailoring the promotional products to the market
The types of products used in this promotion need to be targeted to the market. If you're in IT, for example, you'd use useful IT materials as promotional products. These are functional gifts, with a potentially wide range of uses and obvious values to the target audience.
There's a lot of scope, however, in terms of adding other types of high value products in the consumer or domestic range of promotional merchandise. A package of promotional products is always effective, because of the clear added values of the products.
Soft sell and hard dollar values in promotional giveaways
This is a soft sales pitch with dollar values of the promotion measured in conventional ways:
New business
New business inquiries
Customer retention
Levels of interest in products
Units of promotional products consumed
Interestingly, some promotional products in this class are so popular with customers that they're an actual selling point themselves. Comparatively very low cost promotional items as regular deals have been shown to be good sales incentives, sometimes over long periods of time. This adds to the sale values, even if you're selling the promotional item as an add-on to a sales deal.
The promotion continuum with long life giveaways
The brand effect is to make the brand being promoted a working presence, which greatly increases awareness, but more importantly makes the brand a real purchase option.
As a continuum, the long term marketing effect is:
Promotion makes contact with customer
Promotional products reinforce product values and image
Customer remains aware of the product through presence of promotional items
Product becomes a natural sales consideration over time, not just point of sale.
This isn't really "marketing psychology". It's a proven value based selling point for the customers, and its real application is a strong, effective brand presence over a sustained period of time.
