How do you choose promotional products to effectively draw attention to your company and the products and services that you offer? It can seem like a daunting minefield at first glance as the potential scope of promotional products that any company can offer is as wide-ranging and inventive as the imagination will allow it to be.
This is where our team is ready and waiting to step in and assist you and your company to make wise decisions and get the most impact from your promotions. Bullseye Gifts are promotional experts with huge amounts of experience and demonstrable success recommending tailored solutions for companies and brands of all sizes.
To give an idea of the approach we take when deciding how to choose the right promotional product for your brand, we have put together a step-by-step breakdown to illustrate. The formula that we use to find the perfect promotional products for our clients is as follows:
- Identify the target audience
- Create a set of goals and ideal outcomes
- Decide the budget
- Focus the approach
- Design or locate the perfect product
Step 1. Identify the target audience
This is a step that varies wildly depending on the business involved and the products or services that they need to promote. If you do not understand your intended audience implicitly then the chances of creating and dispersing promotional products that will have any impact at all are very slim.
- Put yourself in their shoes
Don’t be afraid to ask staff, friends, or family members for their honest opinions and incorporate their answers into your promotional brainstorming and concepts. You can also do some good old-fashioned market research and ask people directly or utilise social media polls and other modern methods.
- What typical giveaway items do they value?
- How do the products and services that you offer make them feel?
- Would they be happy to display objects with your branding on them?
Break down the finer details of the individuals you are aiming at and analyse what it is that they aspire to and respect when it comes to the things you can reasonably offer them.
Ask yourself some pertinent questions:
- Where, how, and to whom will your promotional products be distributed?
- Are you more likely to hand them out at conventions and expositions, or will they be sent directly to your potential customers on a more personal basis?
Step 2. Create a set of goals and ideal outcomes
Another crucial step, as the goal of your campaign will heavily influence the product you end up with. What are you actually hoping to achieve? Think about it carefully and be specific about even the smallest details. It may be that your goal is a fairly broad one that is easy to define:
- Promote our brand and increase its exposure to adult individuals within 5kms of our location
Or it might be much more in-depth, focused, and complicated:
- Deliver 1,000 promotional gifts to potential clients aged between 15-25 years of age in households with an above-median income
Either way, you have a goal that you wish to reach and a tangible way to assess when it has been achieved. This is where the services that Bullseye Gifts can offer you are invaluable, as the team can assess your company from an objective standpoint and make useful suggestions accordingly. It is not always easy to step outside of your own brand and view it as others might do, but that is what we do best.
It’s good to be realistic, of course, but it can’t hurt to think and dream big:
- What is the absolute best outcome you could hope for?
- If you could guarantee that result, how would that knowledge affect the things that you do now and afterwards?
- Is it worth the risk to push towards that dream outcome now, or do financial and logistical considerations prevent that?
Step 3. Decide the budget
It is easy to get tied up by this decision and allow it to derail your momentum if not careful. This is another highly personalised step in the process and clearly, small businesses can’t afford to throw the same vast sums of money at promotional activities that larger ones might. But there are several established ways of determining your promotional budget, they are known as:
- The affordable method
- Percentage
- Competitive parity
- Objective and task method
This is not the place to go into each of them in forensic detail but they are easily found online if you wish to delve deeper.
If you are unable to predict the numbers required to utilise some of these techniques then simplify things and just try to decide how much you are willing to spend on each recipient. Failing that, it is generally the case that most large organisations spend from 2 to 5% of their entire marketing budget on branded merchandise.
Step 4. Focus the approach
It’s time to really get down to it and make some decisions, finalise everything and then take a step back. Ask yourself a few questions and answer them honestly. If you’re struggling to take an objective view then get some assistance.
- Does everything seem well-considered and feasible?
- Do the numbers add up?
- Did the market research return a favourable outcome?
- Are we picking the right demographic and method of distributing our gifts?
It’s your last chance to think it over and see if something doesn’t feel right.
Step 5. Design or locate the perfect product
Now comes the fun part. You’re going to choose the promotional products that you will give away and decide how best to brand them. There are a few simple rules to abide by but there are dozens of things to consider and that is where Bullseye Gifts have the expertise to make your life so much easier:
- Try to choose colours that match your brand
- If that is not possible, black and white are always a great fallback
- Think about how to apply your company branding to the objects in question. Traditionally printing was the preferred option but the world has moved on significantly in terms of options, from decals and laser-etching to 3-D printing. Investigate them all and try to have an open mind.
The perfect product for your company to give away might be glaringly obvious, or abstract and highly versatile, depending on the nature of the products and services you offer. If you manufacture chocolate raisins then it should be fairly obvious. If you provide IT solutions then you’ve got a bit more thinking to do.
Contact us
So, if the question is – ‘how do you choose promotional products?’ Then the answer is – ‘you don’t have to’. When you partner with Bullseye Gifts, we can work together to create something special and memorable.
Get in touch with the team today and we can give you our initial thoughts and ideas on how to choose the right promotional product for your brand. There’s no time like the present.