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Saturday, January 22, 2011

choosing the right promotional material

Visibility is the key to a good business. As long as you've made your mark in the industry, you should be able to wing even your lowest revenue days. To be visible though, you have to stand out among your competition, and you can only do this by choosing the right promotional items. These are freebies you give to your clients, not just because you're grateful for their business, but because you need effective vehicles for your branding needs.
While you may wish to stand out when it comes to your logo, slogan and billboard ads, choosing promotional items is another story. You can't pick a lava lamp as a promo item because not a lot of people actually like (and much less, need) a lava lamp. You can, however, pick sports bottles, bags, notepads, travel mugs, T-shirts, and face towels as promotional items because they're functional. When your client finds a use for them, they'll use your freebie, bring it out of the house, show it to friends, and voila, your brand building is in action! Your promotional items may have only cost you less than 10pounds apiece, but you've already earned back thousands of dollars' worth of exposure.
While you may have to give up uniqueness for functionality when you're choosing the right promotional items, this doesn't mean that you can't make these functional freebies unique in their own right. Instead of the plain, old, boring white sports bottle, why not request for a bright colored one, preferably referring to your company's logo as well? You can also choose black promotional items to make bright colored logos stand out more. The choice is yours.
The most popular promotional items are pens, and these are usually given out as freebies by big companies to their partners and big clients. Aside from the functionality of these items, they're also the easiest to customize. If you want full exposure, you can also give out umbrellas as promotional items. Imagine the exposure you'll be getting when it rains and your clients pop their umbrellas open. It's going to be quite a view from the top, and your competition might just have a heart attack seeing your logo all over the place.
Bags are also good items to give away, but they're quite tricky because they're also fashion items. This means that not everyone (women especially) would be willing to admit that they're wearing a promotional freebie. If you really want effective items that would promote your brand, stay away from the fashion scene and go for highly practical and functional items.

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