We may receive commissions for affiliate links included in this article. This is a sponsored post. Future Sharks makes no warranties about the statements, facts and/or claims made on this article. These are the opinions of the author. Read our advertising and contributor disclosure here.
Promotional product marketing is a popular and successful marketing strategy that renders effective results. Promotional product marketing does a good job at brand awareness and brand recall. Any marketing strategy will only be good and successful if it is executed well and without mistakes. The same goes for promotional product marketing. If you want your promotional products to do the job well, there are certain common mistakes that you must avoid.
Here are some mistakes that are often made in promotional product marketing.
1. Information Overload
Overloading your promotional merchandise with information is a bad idea. You want your customers to know about your company as much as possible but that doesn’t mean that you put all your information on promotional products. They are not meant for brand information but rather just for brand recall. On a promotional product you should only have minimal information about your product.So, keep the product promotion subtle and classy.
2. Saving Costs on Quality
More often than not, companies try to save costs on promotional products by getting low quality products. Remember that promotional products will work like brand ambassadors for your company. Customers will judge the quality of your products based on the quality of your promotional products. So it’s important that the quality of your promotional products be equally good, if not better than, your range of products.
3. Generic Items
Items like promotional bags, notebooks, mugs, keychains etc., have become too common. While it’s okay to have these as your promotional products, also try to add some unique promotional products that will stand out from the rest of the items that customers usually, already have at their homes.
4. Target Audience
It’s very important that you keep the target audience in mind when you are designing your promotional products. If the promotional products are not of any use to your target audience, then it will fail to do its job of brand awareness and brand recall. If you have a diverse target audience, then try and get a diverse range of promotional products, but always understand your target audience and then design your products.
5. Restricting to Fairs and Events
Why restrict your promotional products to fairs and events only? Start making your promotional products available on your website as well. You can give a promotional product for free to those who sign up for your company’s online newsletter, or make a minimum amount purchase. This way you encourage customers to sign up for your newsletter or make a purchase, hence increasing sales and customer database. You can also give some coupons or discount codes along with your promotional products so that the customers feel encouraged to use those.
6. Don’t Delay Orders
You shouldn’t wait for the last minute to place orders for your promotional products. In fact, you never know what opportunities might come your way and be the perfect time to hand out promotional products to potential customers. So, you should always have a large variety and bunch of promotional products to be given at any point of time.
7. Colour and Design
It’s important that the colour and design of your promotional products be in sync with your brand’s image and theme. If there is a certain colour for your brand, then try and get your promotional products of the same colours and theme so that they resonate well with your brand image and can do its function of brand recall with the customer.
Conclusion
Promotional product marketing may be cheaper than other marketing strategies but should be taken equally seriously because if done right, then promotional product marketing can be very successful. If you want to increase sales and want customers to think of you first thing when they need a product or service which you offer, then this might be a smart marketing strategy. However, you must keep in mind the above mistakes so that you can easily avoid them.
➡ Looking to get featured on Future Sharks?
