Stock Products Now For Marketing Campaigns
Now is a great time of the year to take a large piece of paper, whiteboard or spreadsheet and simply map out your promotional marketing events for the year. Most campaigns will include both above and below-the-line activities and once you have a clear schedule and media map you can then start to think about timing in relation to promotional products. This is important because very often we work in a micro-world and do not always see the big picture. Mapping out your entire promotional campaign lets you see all the planned events and to start to consider the merchandise and giveaways you will need to order during the year. Instead of going for last minute deliveries, you could then start to work with a promotional gifts supplier like Redbows to ensure you get the best possible prices and deliveries – when you want them – during the year. This is not a contract order but a way of building a relationship with a gifts supplier in much the same way as you would with any other marketing agency. How this works in practice is that you will place orders for bulk promotional items such as the stock merchandise that most companies use – pens, mugs, mousemats and flashdrives – but your gifts supplier can then also make you aware during the year of trends (and what’s hot) and make suggestions for the latest appropriate gifts for your events as they appear on the market. People talk about the 80:20 Pareto rule. Well in this case you could say that 80% of your gifts will be the stock merchandise items and 20% more unusual gifts. It will be the latter that could really set your company appart and help to generate outstanding sales results in 2009. The important aspect to all this is communication and the forming of a unique products supply relationship that goes beyond mere client and supplier. Gifts marketing is as much an art as it is a science.
