Why You Should Use Promotional Items

Whether you are opening a new business, you are an experienced salesman looking for a new edge or you just want to find a way to boost the income into your organization, promotional items are a great way to achieve your goals. From advertising a new store to promoting a new product, there are a thousand different uses for promotional products.

To know this all you have to do is look at all different promotions that call for your attention every day in the mail, on billboards, in the newspapers and even in schools and churches. Everyone uses them to help them achieve goals that range from simple advertisement to serious financial efforts. The question of why anyone should use promotional products is a simple answer of because they are effective. However answering the why of how they are effective takes a bit more looking.

Understanding the Basics
The basic reason promotional products are used is to get someone’s attention. Whether the reason you are attempting to get attention is to spread the word of a new business or to draw a customer’s focus on a new item in an already established enterprise, the basic fact remains that you are looking to set yourself apart in some way. One of the best way to do this is the giving away of promotional products. These simple and often cheap products can go a long way to improving your chances in any marketing attempt.

Rewarding Your Customers
While the basic reason for the use of promotional products is about getting people’s attention, these handy items are good for several reasons. Another great reason to use promotional products is as a way to encourage and reward customer loyalty.

How many times have you gone to a store that has offered a preferred customer card? While it is true that often these cards come with financing and interest, they are actually designed to encourage the spending of money in the store. Once they have you signed up, they will then begin to send you promotional offer after promotional offer, all of these are designed to keep your business. The same goes for the use of customer appreciation products such as free items. A happy customer is one who is much more likely to return, and what better way to make a customer happy than to give them something they can use for free?

Raising Awareness
Yet another use of promotional products is to raise awareness of a particular subject. This can range from a local politician handing out money clips to reinforce his economic message to a family attempting to raise money for medical treatment. Lance Armstrong and his Live Strong campaign to raise awareness and money for research into fighting leukemia is perhaps one of the best known uses of a promotional product being put too work in this fashion.

Another common sight are such things as the Girl Scouts selling their cookies or children going door to door selling items to raise money for their school. A good way to guess the success of this technique is to ask if organizations keep doing the same thing over and over. If they do, then it most likely is a great way to accomplish their goals. If you are an officer of a non profit wondering about a good way to generate money for your organization, take a look at using promotional products to do this.

There are many, many reasons to use promotional products. In fact it might be said that if someone is attempting to do anything that requires the action of another person, there is a way to use a promotional product. However just simply buying a thousand pens with your companies name written on it is no guarantee that your promotional campaign will have any success.

While these promotional products are great for getting attention, it also takes careful planning and timing to make a true promotional campaign successful. Yet this is not said to discourage you, or to make you hesitate. In fact the truth is that properly used, promotional products can make a world of difference in any company or sales attempt. This should be balanced with good sense and careful planning so that you get the maximum out of your promotional campaign.