Wednesday, January 11, 2012
How Promotional Products Can be Used to Help Your Company
You may be considering promotional products, but wonder how they can help your company. Believe it or not, these tiny little investments can often provide you with a better return on your investment than billboards or bench ads in the community. Sure ads like billboards may be noticed as people are driving around town, but they are much more expensive than a giveaway item and will only appear in one place, where promotional products can travel around from place to place. In fact, promotional products can help your company in a number of ways you may have never thought of. Here are a few ideas of how these giveaways can help promote your company:
• Getting passed along. Items like pens or pencils are tiny investments, but the reality is that they are seen on a regular basis and often passed along to people who would never have heard of your company otherwise. Most businesses are going to make pens and pencils available to their customers and when they are accidentally removed from your premise, wouldn’t you rather they help promote your business to everyone who uses them?
• Daily reminders. Some things, like desk calendars and chip clips may not ever leave the possession of the person you gave them to, but they can be seen every day by that potential customer. This is a great way to subtlety send your message on a regular basis.
• Walking billboards. Ever wonder why so many companies give away tee shirts and hats? It’s a double promotion. The person wearing your shirt or cap will think about your business when they put them on and then everyone who sees them throughout the day will be reminded of your services as well. Can you ask for a better low-cost investment?
• Local goodwill. Consider giving away low-cost items at a community even in exchange for a mention as a sponsor. This will result in potential customers getting your promotional products for future use. Overall goodwill towards your company gets your neighbors thinking about how great it was of you to have provided free items at the event.
• Corporate gifts. If you have higher-end clientele, a simple tee shirt may not cut it, but a gourmet gift set or a stunning desk accessory may impress your potential client and leave a lasting impression in his or her memory.
• Employee rewards. Not all promotional products need to be used for advertising. You can also provide employee incentives and small reminders at your company parties with these items. It’s always good to remember that a happy employee is a productive employee and just because you have a small business doesn’t mean you can’t afford to reward your employees from time to time.
Original Article by Jill Harness
• Getting passed along. Items like pens or pencils are tiny investments, but the reality is that they are seen on a regular basis and often passed along to people who would never have heard of your company otherwise. Most businesses are going to make pens and pencils available to their customers and when they are accidentally removed from your premise, wouldn’t you rather they help promote your business to everyone who uses them?
• Daily reminders. Some things, like desk calendars and chip clips may not ever leave the possession of the person you gave them to, but they can be seen every day by that potential customer. This is a great way to subtlety send your message on a regular basis.
• Walking billboards. Ever wonder why so many companies give away tee shirts and hats? It’s a double promotion. The person wearing your shirt or cap will think about your business when they put them on and then everyone who sees them throughout the day will be reminded of your services as well. Can you ask for a better low-cost investment?
• Local goodwill. Consider giving away low-cost items at a community even in exchange for a mention as a sponsor. This will result in potential customers getting your promotional products for future use. Overall goodwill towards your company gets your neighbors thinking about how great it was of you to have provided free items at the event.
• Corporate gifts. If you have higher-end clientele, a simple tee shirt may not cut it, but a gourmet gift set or a stunning desk accessory may impress your potential client and leave a lasting impression in his or her memory.
• Employee rewards. Not all promotional products need to be used for advertising. You can also provide employee incentives and small reminders at your company parties with these items. It’s always good to remember that a happy employee is a productive employee and just because you have a small business doesn’t mean you can’t afford to reward your employees from time to time.
Original Article by Jill Harness
Measuring Returns on Investments for Promotional Products
As a small business owner, it is critical that you always spend wisely, particularly when it comes to a marketing and advertising campaign. While you might be interested in contacting a radio station marketing team or working with a promotional product store to create useful giveaways, it is important to know that you are getting your money’s worth from your ad campaign.
There are a lot of different ways to measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, but there is still no way to accurately calculate how many sales are directly related to the marketing. One of the most widely accepted measurements of an advertisement return on investment (ROI) is how many impressions, or views, the ad receives compared to how much it costs, which is called the cost per impression or CPI. In this regard, promotional products have one of the best ROI costs of any marketing campaign. According to research by the Advertising Specialty Institute, here are the CPIs for a number of marketing strategies:
• Promotional Products. In most cases, the average CPI of a promotional product is only one fifth of a cent, $0.002. This number applies to personalized baseball caps, calendars, bags and pens that cost around three dollars each. If you’re looking to offer a more upscale item, T-shirts are always a good way to go, but the CPI of these items is still only $0.005, or half a cent.
• Radio Ads. Assuming you don’t pay someone to write your jingle and you write your own script, radio ads can have a CPI that runs about the same as a T-shirt.
• TV Ads. Depending on the station and programming schedule, the CPI of television slots can vary greatly. If you show your commercial on a cable station, your CPI may be as low as $0.007, whereas if you opt to play it on a network during primetime, the CPI will be closer to $0.019. It is important to remember that this will also increase depending on how much money you decide to put into your ad in order to make it look and sound good. It’s a lot easier to make a professional-looking T-shirt design than it is to film a commercial that will reflect well on your brand.
• Newspaper Ads. Depending on the size of your ad and your local paper’s advertising rates, your CPI can vary greatly, but a half-page, black-and-white ad in a newspaper in a mid-sized market will generally be around $0.019.
• Magazine. If you opt to go big and run an ad in a national magazine, you’d better be ready to make a pretty big investment without a huge return, because the CPI for a full-page national magazine ad is around $0.033 – which is about ten times what it costs to make an impression with a promotional pen or baseball cap.
• Promotional products are effective because they are inexpensive, and their longevity ensures that they will be seen time and time again.
Original Article by Jill Harness
There are a lot of different ways to measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, but there is still no way to accurately calculate how many sales are directly related to the marketing. One of the most widely accepted measurements of an advertisement return on investment (ROI) is how many impressions, or views, the ad receives compared to how much it costs, which is called the cost per impression or CPI. In this regard, promotional products have one of the best ROI costs of any marketing campaign. According to research by the Advertising Specialty Institute, here are the CPIs for a number of marketing strategies:
• Promotional Products. In most cases, the average CPI of a promotional product is only one fifth of a cent, $0.002. This number applies to personalized baseball caps, calendars, bags and pens that cost around three dollars each. If you’re looking to offer a more upscale item, T-shirts are always a good way to go, but the CPI of these items is still only $0.005, or half a cent.
• Radio Ads. Assuming you don’t pay someone to write your jingle and you write your own script, radio ads can have a CPI that runs about the same as a T-shirt.
• TV Ads. Depending on the station and programming schedule, the CPI of television slots can vary greatly. If you show your commercial on a cable station, your CPI may be as low as $0.007, whereas if you opt to play it on a network during primetime, the CPI will be closer to $0.019. It is important to remember that this will also increase depending on how much money you decide to put into your ad in order to make it look and sound good. It’s a lot easier to make a professional-looking T-shirt design than it is to film a commercial that will reflect well on your brand.
• Newspaper Ads. Depending on the size of your ad and your local paper’s advertising rates, your CPI can vary greatly, but a half-page, black-and-white ad in a newspaper in a mid-sized market will generally be around $0.019.
• Magazine. If you opt to go big and run an ad in a national magazine, you’d better be ready to make a pretty big investment without a huge return, because the CPI for a full-page national magazine ad is around $0.033 – which is about ten times what it costs to make an impression with a promotional pen or baseball cap.
• Promotional products are effective because they are inexpensive, and their longevity ensures that they will be seen time and time again.
Original Article by Jill Harness
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