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A well-chosen piece of promotional merchandise can be a great way to reach out to potential customers (and influencers) to make them aware of your brand. As a general rule, you want your promotional item to be practical, inspirational, and/or fun.
Practical Items
If you’re going to offer an item to be used once and then discarded, then ideally, it should be recyclable. If you’re hoping that recipients will keep the item long-term (or gift it to someone else who will), then you need to make sure that it will be useful over the long term.
For many years, branded pens and sticky notes have been the promotional items of choice for a number of organizations, and they can still be good options. However, it’s worth noting that in today’s digital age, people often have less need for them. Therefore, unless they’re also really attractive, they may just be viewed as clutter.
Sustainable merchandise is becoming more popular, such as bags for life and reusable straws.
Inspirational Items
Most people enjoy having a little inspiration in their lives, and if you can deliver it via your promotional merchandise, then you could be on to a winner. Inspirational merchandise, can, however, be particularly challenging to create.
Frankly, if you’ve found a good quote on the internet, then the chances are good that plenty of other people have found it too and your “inspiration” could easily turn into someone else’s cliché. Original pictures could help to get around this but could be expensive to produce.
Inspirational promotional merchandise probably works best either when it’s being produced for a very small group of people whom you know well or when it’s also either practical or fun. For example, an inspirational calendar is still a useful calendar even if your recipient already knows all the quotes in it.
Fun Items
Personalized confectionery products are probably the ultimate fun items. They can easily be used to carry inspirational messages and be presented in a reusable container that can go on to serve a practical purpose.
The simple fact of the matter is that food is a consumable item, which means it’s not just going to be shoved away with the rest of a person’s desk clutter. Confectioneries are popular, which means you have a good chance that recipients will appreciate it or at the very least, know someone who does.
It’s also a very flexible option since it can fit in with just about any sort of promotional campaign, even health-orientated ones. You can simply choose healthier forms of confectionaries and/or offer smaller quantities with beautiful packaging.
About the Author
Adele Thomas is a Director at promotional confectionery supplier Distinctive Confectionery. She has over 20 years of experience in the promotional merchandise industry and has helped a large number of businesses over the years with their promotional marketing.
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