Promotional Products: When To Save & When To Splurge

Promotional Products: When To Save & When To Splurge

Promotional products are extremely effective marketing tools. Unlike traditional marketing materials – flyers, business cards, brochures, and so on – promotional products are meant to be useful.

This means that the average lifespan of a promotional item is much longer than any other kind of marketing or advertising product – in fact, a study conducted by Promotional Products Association International found that 69% of all recipients of a promotional item plan to keep it indefinitely.

But not all promotional products are the same. In order to truly take advantage of the power of promotional products, your company needs to know when it should save and purchase more low-cost products – and when to spend serious money on high-quality, branded items.

Saving Money With Low-Cost, High-Impact Items

Just because low-cost items are cheap doesn’t mean they’re not appreciated. In fact, low-cost items like custom pens and logo bags can provide a huge return on investment, and are a great way to promote your brand.

This is because cost isn’t really a factor that people consider when they keep branded products – instead, utility is the biggest factor. Your customers will keep a useful item, even if it’s not high-value.

For example, if you purchase a $1 branded pen instead of a $3 branded pen and give it away to your customers, they’re not going to turn it away – in fact, they’re likely to hold onto it, despite the fact that it’s a relatively cheap product.

So for smaller items that you give away regularly, it’s a wise idea to invest in some low-cost stock that you can give away whenever you want – this ensures that you’ll always be able to provide a potential customer with some kind of useful item, and promote your brand.

There’s also a place for giving away these type of low-cost items. We see these appear with high frequency at smaller trade shows, sponsorship events, in charitable donations, and more. Why is this? It comes down to the fact that many brands aren’t going to distribute higher-end type products in large volumes (unless they have the budget to do so). Products that go into executive gifts, high-end marketing campaigns, and more, simply require more personalization, customization, and strategic planning than the low-cost items mentioned above.

That being said, there’s still a threshold of “junk” to sort through when obtaining a low-cost promotional item. It’s important to work with someone who understands that low-cost shouldn’t reflect low-quality. Those variables do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Investing In Expensive Branded Products

You shouldn’t just invest in low-cost branded products. When it’s time to really impress a client, it’s a good idea to have plenty of high-value items to give away. These would include items such as:

• High quality apparel
• Electronic gadgets
• Branded drinkware
• Bound notebooks
• Coolers

And so on. Though value is not a huge factor in whether or not someone keeps an item, giving away higher-value items certainly makes a better impression on a potential client.

For this reason, these items should mostly be reserved for current clients, and leads who have potential to convert to paying customers. When you give someone a high-value branded item that’s useful, they’re much more likely to stick around and listen to your sales pitch.

Trust The Forefront Group To Help You Make The Right Choice

At The Forefront Group, we’re promotional item experts. Our team specializes in providing incredible branded products to our customers, and offering expert advice that can help you maximize the effectiveness of your promotional items.

So talk to us today. Our team of strategic partners and consultants can help you design a fantastic promotional item marketing strategy – ensuring that you get maximum ROI on your investments, and continue to bring in high-value customers.