How to Increase Brand Awareness with Promotional Items
Brand awareness is the very first step of the sales funnel and is absolutely critical to eventually securing a sale. After all, customers can’t buy your product or service if they don’t know that your company even exists! Promotional items are an essential part of your marketing mix and can be an excellent tool for raising brand awareness. So how exactly can you use promotional items? In this guide we will offer up eight ideas for how to increase brand awareness, and then give out 10 top tips for choosing the most effective promotional gifts for your business.
How to Increase Brand Awareness with Promotional Items
Not sure how to get started with raising brand awareness through promotional items? No worries! We’ve got you covered. Here are eight of our favorite ways to use branded swag to promote your company, products, and services.
1. Hand them out at industry events.
Perhaps the most well-known use for promotional items is handing them out at trade shows and other industry events. It’s pretty much expected that any company hosting a booth at a tradeshow will have some type of giveaway for attendees who pass by. There may also be additional opportunities to give away promotional items, such as sponsoring the official welcome bag, during the trade show. These extra opportunities are usually claimed months in advance, so if you’re looking to go above and beyond at your next trade show, inquire about it early.
2. Give them away at job fairs.
Trade shows aren’t the only events you should bring promotional items to. If attending in-person job fairs is part of your recruitment strategy, then you should definitely bring some branded items to give away to anyone who stops by your booth. This is also a great thing to do if you host an open house, which is kind of like a casual job fair at your office instead of an external location.
You can also consider giving promotional items to any candidate that you interview at either the job fair or your office as a token of your appreciation for their time. Though this is by no means required, it’s a nice gesture that can end the interview on a positive note even if you don’t end up ultimately extending them an offer.
3. Host a giveaway on social media.
Promotional items aren’t only useful for in-person events. If you are looking to gain more followers on social media, consider hosting a giveaway or contest where the winner (or winners) gets some branded swag for free. Be sure to follow each social media platform’s rules for hosting a giveaway. If email is more your company’s style, you can also run a referral contest to encourage your current subscribers to ask their friends to sign up. Either way, you’ll gain more followers or subscribers, and the lucky winners will appreciate their free swag.
4. Show your employees appreciation.
Branded company swag is one of the best ways to show your employees how much you appreciate them. It’s common to give employees swag for big work anniversaries, such as one, five, and 10 years. Employee care packages ideas are also a great way to celebrate the end of a major project or any other big work accomplishment that deserves to be recognized and rewarded. Many companies find it helpful to keep a stockpile of swag so they are always ready whenever an employee deserves to be celebrated.
5. Use them for employee incentive programs.
Celebrating past employee accomplishments is not the only use for promotional items. They can also form an integral part of employee incentive programs (sometimes called employee compensation programs), which can take many forms. Some companies use them to incentivize employees to refer their friends to the company during hiring sprees, while others use them to encourage employees to finish their projects faster. The rewards can also take many forms and often include swag in addition to other benefits such as health and wellness credits and professional development reimbursements.
6. Tell your clients “thank you.”
High quality branded promotional items are a fantastic way to show your clients how much you appreciate their business — not to mention they’re pretty much expected at the end of the calendar year during the holiday season. Giving your clients a thoughtful, unique branded gift will help keep you top of mind and may even lead to more business down the road. And you don’t have to wait until the holidays either: It’s totally appropriate to give your clients a celebratory gift at the end of major projects such as a website launch or a big redesign.
7. Stock them at company stores.
If you have physical storefronts, having promotional items to give away can be a great incentive to entice people to come visit your store. Giveaways are popular during grand openings and holidays, but you can do it any time you want to increase foot traffic to a given location. Consider giving them away to the first X visitors in line, or include a free gift with purchase to encourage people to actually buy something instead of just window shop. You might be surprised how much a free gift will motivate potential shoppers!
8. Add them to online orders.
If you are an e-commerce company with no physical storefronts, you can still use promotional items to increase brand awareness. Many e-commerce companies have great success adding a free gift to orders that hit a certain minimum spend. By requiring that consumers spend a certain amount of money, you encourage them to spend more money and reward them for their efforts, all while raising brand awareness for your company. If you’ve never done promotional giveaways for your e-commerce company, try it out to see how it affects the frequency and size of your orders.
Promote Your Business with Branded Swag
10 Tips for Choosing Promotional Items
Now that you’ve got some inspiration for ways to use promotional items, we’re ready to discuss our top 10 tips for choosing the best promotional items to raise brand awareness for your company.
1. Decide how you will be using your promotional item.
Hopefully, the list in the previous section helped you narrow down the way you plan to use your promotional item because each situation calls for a different type of promotional item. For instance, for a trade show you will probably want bulk gifts under $5, while you will want to splurge more on a client appreciation gift. If you are planning to give away branded gifts in many different situations, you might want to choose different promotional items to suit the occasion since they are not one size fits all.
2. Set your budget ahead of time.
No matter your budget, you’ll be able to find a promotional item that fits it! Whether you have unlimited funds or are working on a shoestring, there is a promotional item that fits the bill, literally and figuratively. Set your total budget ahead of time and let that narrow down your options.
3. Determine how many units you will need.
Right after determining your budget, you must decide how many units you need for each promotional item. It’s usually best to order at least a few extra of each item in case a few get mislaid. That way, you have some wiggle room. Do note that the number of units will play into your budget: Usually, the more items you order, the greater your bulk discount.
4. Go for quality over quantity.
Sometimes it can be tempting to stretch your budget by getting as many of the cheapest items as possible. However, if you’re not specifically looking for bulk items and don’t need a very large amount, then we advise choosing quality over quantity when it comes to branded gifts. A single high-quality promotional item in a nice box will make a more lasting impression than a handful of cheap giveaways.
5. Consider your brand identity.
Choosing a promotional item that fits with your brand identity can increase its impact exponentially. For instance, if you are a tech company, then tech-related gifts such as power banks and headphones make perfect sense. If you work in the beverages industry, then gifts for cocktail lovers might be more up your alley. Try browsing the product categories that are closely related to your industry to see which ones speak to you.
6. See what your competitors are doing.
The last thing you want to do is accidentally have the exact same trade show giveaway that your competitor does. Checking out the promotional items that your closest competitors are using will not only give you inspiration but help you avoid choosing a branded gift that is too similar to theirs, thereby increasing the odds that your company will stand out in potential customers’ minds.
7. Choose something useful.
Lots of promotional giveaway items are cute, but not necessarily helpful. When in doubt, we recommend choosing something useful over something gimmicky. This may feel practical and boring, but people will reach for phone chargers and other helpful tools while less useful items gather dust in the back of a closet. Choosing useful items will increase the odds that the recipient uses it, which in turn increases the number of interactions they have with your branding.
8. Make sure your logo is prominently displayed.
When choosing a promotional item, most companies want their logo to be clearly visible on the product. After all, you’re doing this for brand awareness! Not all promotional items are created equal, however: Some have much smaller print areas than others. All other things being equal, you may wish to choose the product with the larger logo to get the best bang for your buck.
9. Add on branded packaging.
If you’ve got room in your budget and really want to make a great impression on the recipient, then we absolutely recommend adding branded packaging to your corporate gifts. Branded packaging makes receiving the gift feel like a total luxury experience and makes a lasting impact on clients, employees, and other high value recipients. Do keep in mind that some of our iPromo curated gift sets already include branded packaging, and we can definitely add it on to other items as well if it isn’t already included.
10. Select a reliable supplier.
There are lots of promotional item retailers out there, but not all of them will deliver a high-quality item that looks true to the picture and ships fast. For best results, select a vendor with a long track record and the testimonials to show for it, such as iPromo. Since 1999, we’ve been making and shipping high-quality promotional products that our customers (and their recipients) love. During that time, we’ve worked with over 45,000 customers to increase their brand awareness through branded gifts.
Ready to get a quote for a promotional item, or need help selecting the perfect corporate swag for your business? Our customer service department is here to help. Contact us via email or call us at 888-99-iPromo, and we’ll be happy to assist you in finding the perfect promotional item for your needs.
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