The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

How do you choose promotional items when most suppliers offer several thousand alternatives? Here are our top marketing tops. Many companies use promotional gifts for a variety of reasons but the primary ones are to increase brand awareness and generate sales. So if you are thinking about investing in such marketing gifts as pens, mugs and even confectionery items here are five general selection guidelines:

1. Link the Promotional Items To Your Company – make sure you include your company name, contact numbers and logo on the product. After all a promotional product is like a company business card.

2. Relate the Promotional Items To Your Company – choose promotional items that in some way have a synergy with your company product or service. If you are an insurance company for example think about offering umbrellas. By associating a promotional item with a company product or service, the brand recognition and impact is far greater.

3. Choose Promotional Items With Enough Imprint Area – by this we mean make sure that your promotional items are big enough to carry your marketing message. This may seem obvious but to make sure your items are going to have the impact and legibility you want try printing out some artwork to the actual imprint area size. If you can read it then so should your clients.

4. Think Quality When Selecting Promotional Items – promotional gifts do vary in their quality and this is often reflected in the price. So if you are promoting a high value item do not use a low-cost giveaway and vice-versa. Sure maximise your marketing budget but ensure again that there is some synergy in terms of quality, reliability and general feel.

5. Continuous Testing – keep testing promotional gifts till you get a formula that produces results. Remember that investing in promotional gifts is like investing in any marketing communications and franchise opportunity. Brand building is the result of a cumulative effect and requires continuous investment.

Have you ever wondered what are the three most popular uses for business gifts? Well you might be surprised to know that they include: exhibitions and tradeshow giveaways, employee and client rewards, incentives and brand builders. Not that surprising really but then the promotional gifts industry is essentially based on the simple premise that people like to receive gifts, that corporate and business gifts in particular can help to engender receptive feelings and responses towards a supplier and develop their overall brand image. So what are the most popular business gifts? Well by far and away the prime movers are the lower cost items that can be found everyday within an office environment like mugs, keyrings, pens, rulers and coasters. Off course in these environmentally conscious times, ECO gifts are also rising fast in popularity but so to are more novel ideas as the growing range of gadgets, in particular USB flashdrive variations, shows.

The other day we were asked what gifts we would put into a start-up gifts pack for new businesses. Off course the hardest part here is determining a gift selection that would fit most budgets. So we decided to start with a small spend of £250 and see just where this could take us. Now for this sum you really want to get to the highest possible volume of products whilst still trying to ensure that the items you give out have some longevity. When you look solving the problem from this point of view promotional pens are the one item that hits you head on. Whether you opt for plastic or frosted plastic pens makes little difference to the overall spend. Promotional pens are ideal for start up businesses who need to get their name, brand and contact details across. They offer a great print area – the barrel and in some instances the pen clip themselves. Off course another great attribute is that promotional pens also come in a range of colours and can generally take an imprint from one to four colours. So our recommendation for a start-up business would be to opt for plastic promotional pens – the perfect business start-up gifts.

Are promotional products and pens in particular turning into the modern day equivalent of the calling card? We have a client who purchases buckets of them – nothing else except promotional pens. Everywhere they go they hand out their pen, putting them on reception desks, in kiosks, in office meeting rooms and the like. To him the promotional pen he hands out is now synomymous with his organisation. All he has printed onto the pen is his company name, logo and contact details. I reckon that he has gone through around 5,000 pens over the last few years with us and that to him means 5,000 people he has touched and promoted himself to. No wonder his business keeps growing with such personal marketing.

What is it about promotional pens that makes them so collectable? For me printed pens are one of the best promotional ideas you can use because everyone writes (well almost nearly everyone) and so a pen is useful inside and outside work. How many of us keep a pen to hand almost without thinking. Now the trick is to pick a pen that will really promote your brand and as one of the largest suppliers in the UK we offer quite a range. My top tips are to make sure your imprint area and the logo and text you want printed within it are equally matched. Sometimes less is more, so make sure everything is visible. Also remember that your background material and colour – from the pen itself – can affect how your imprint will appear. If in doubt ask for a sample and make a print to scale on a piece of paper to stick on and test. Promotional pencils are also another great idea – especially within office and engineering environments.

Research last year on the North American gifts market by PPB Magazine showed that the US spends a staggering US$6bn on promotional products. Now that’s an awful lof of promotional products. How are they  being used? Well the primary uses are to reward customers and generate goodwill. Coming in third is prospecting and recognising employee contributions.

For customers and prospects the facts show that organisations tend to favour those suppliers from whom they receive promo items. They do not mind the logos, imprints and slogans. Somehow the companies using promotional gifts get a far greater share of ‘mind time’ and create greater goodwill and loyalty than those that do not use such merchandise in their marketing. The same can be said for employees who also exhibit greater loyalty and productivity when rewarded.

So which corporate gifts work the best? Well it appears that even every day office items like promotional mugs and promotional pens are just as effective a larger or more expensive promo items. This is interesting research which supports many of our own findings in the UK market.

We live in a world that wants environmentally friendly ECO gifts but is there a price premium for such promotional products? A couple of years ago when ECO products were just emerging as a promotional merchandise alternative, ECO gifts did carry a price premium. However the pricing of all promotional items no matter whether it is a promotional pen made from recycled plastics or corn maize, is volume related. No only have the volumes of this type of promotional product increased but the manufacturing processes have become more efficient enabling lower manufacturing process costs. The real question therefore is not just is there a price premium but which ECO gifts are the most environmentally friendly? To answer this you need to look at the materials used in their manufacture, how they are reclaimed and perhaps also start to question the carbon footprints generated to bring them to market. For example, take promotional coasters using recycled plastics or reclaimed rubber tyres, where are they actually made? If UK sourced for a UK gifts supplier then they could be more ECO friendly than those shipped in half-way round the world from China. However, even with shipping costs the Chinese alternatives could be cheaper due to their lower manufacturing and labour costs. So when it comes to such ECO promotional products you have to balance price against the true ECO nature of the material reclaiming, manufacturing and shipping processes.

Promotional products are a broadcast medium just like any other print, radio or visual media. As such when designing the imprint you need to remember that there are certain key elements. Let’s start with the background. No we are not talking blue ones as in Star Wars but the materials you will be printing onto. When choosing the colour of your promotional product you need to ensure your logo will stand out. There is no point choosing a product colour that will clash with your logo and imprint. Sometimes if there is more than one colour in the logo you may decide to opt for a single colour print and one that will give a high contrast. Imagine the Redbows logo on red promotional pens and you can see that the red loops and name would not stand out. Then you need to think about the imprint itself. Try not to clash fonts and mix them up. A single font is always best for clarity, especially when the imprint area is fairly small as on a promotional pen or pencil. Then choose your imprint colour. As with your logo make sure this stands off the promotional item. Don’t let your marketing message get lost and make sure you make as much of this broadcast medium as possible.

When it comes to self-promotion, promotional pens are a must. No other promotional products will provide you with such opportunities to market your organisation and these types of writing instruments come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and prices, with a whole range of options to match. So what makes promo pens such great marketing tools? Well the first aspect is that everyone writes and needs a pen. I am sure that a few hundred years ago if you looked carefully at the quill being used there was a brand marked onto its stem. Seriously, pens and even pencils work because they are can be supplied in small or large quantities and at a relatively low price. They can be coloured match or made up to suit your company logo. Pens also offer a very visible imprint area and more often than not you can print on both the barrel and clip. Now the only things to be careful with when it comes to promotional pens is to make sure that you choose a barrel and clip colour that will make your imprint as visible as possible. You also need to make sure that your imprint is not so small that it becomes hard to read. You should win every time with a promotional pen or pencil and push them out to as many people as possible. When you find a design that works for your company and clients – stick to it and perhaps only vary the colours used next time.

Just how small can you be before you experience the impact promotional items can have on your marketing? Well we know several ‘one-person’ bands to give them their politically correct name, who have been using promotional merchandise to build their brand and get their name in front of people. One of the classics for this are promotional pens, printed with a logo and contact details. Some of these smaller entrepreneurs are never without a supply of these pens and make sure they press one into the hand of everyone they meet. They also make sure the pens are of a high-enough quality, with a classic or modern eye-catching design. It really does not matter whether you are a small business owner or large corporate. The power of using promotional products in your marketing and daily activities is one you should harness immediately and rest assured as you will never turn back.