Promotional products have long been hailed as a cost-effective means to increase brand awareness and reach out to a greater number of potential customers. A 2014 Global Advertising Institute Impressions Study revealed that promotional items had a lower cost-per-impression compared to other traditional forms of advertising such as magazine ads, TV commercials and the like. There are a number of important stats (some of which we will mention below) that prove the high effectiveness of promotional products as a cost-effective marketing tool.
Accordingly, promo items have been a perennial favorite with marketers and everybody from new businesses to established global players make extensive use of this marketing strategy to reap the rewards. However, these giveaways hold more relevance to startups and small businesses that need to work around a relatively smaller marketing budget and can seldom afford to invest in traditional advertising channels. And this is where wholesale promotional products can make a big impact. Once a business buys promo products in large bulks, this helps keep the cost of the items down without however compromising on their quality. All established promotional products companies will offer huge discounts when you buy wholesale. For example, Promotions Warehouse, a leading Australian promo products company, offers superior quality Rotating USB Drives at $6.04/piece for bulk orders of 2,500 pieces or more. For a 1,000-piece delivery, the price goes up to $7.59; for 100 pieces, $11.00/piece; and for a 50-piece order, you’ll need to pay $14.50 for each item.
Why Use Promotional Products
Here are some vital stats (gathered from studies and surveys conducted by PPAI and the Advertising Specialty Institute) that should prove more than sufficient to answer the above question.
- More than 76% participants (in a survey done by PPAI) could recall the name of the businesses from which they received promo products in the last 12 months. In stark comparison, only about 54% surveyees could remember the name of an advertiser they had come across in a newspaper or magazine in the PREVIOUS WEEK.
- 85% of people receiving a promotional product actually do business with the advertiser.
- 60% of people surveyed said they keep the promo items with them for up to 2 years while 63% also mentioned that they pass on the products to others (friends, relatives) when they do not need them themselves.
- 89% consumers revealed that they could recall the name of the advertiser even 2 years after receiving a giveaway promotional item.
- In the United States, 8 out of every 10 consumers have in their possession anything between 1 to 10 promotional items at any given point of time.
The above set of stats amply reveals the importance of promo products for purposes of marketing and brand recognition. Still another crucial piece of statistics, especially with regard to the subject under discussion in this article, is that promo items helped draw a massive 500% more referrals when consumers were happy and satisfied with the items gifted.
Promotional Products: Usefulness, Quality, Durability
Another great thing about promotional products is that no matter where a potential recipient falls in the sales funnel, there are always some appropriate gifts. For example, you can increase brand awareness through many typical top-of-the-funnel gifts (writing instruments, desk accessories, t-shirts, tote bags and others); encourage engagement with the brand through mid-funnel gifts (quality outerwear, drinkware, USB drives, etc.); and accelerate your pipeline by gifting more expensive and often novelty objects to your select range of customers.
And wholesale promotional products are ideal for the first two categories mentioned above. The thing to understand here is that for all the efficacy of promo products, they also bear the negative reputation of being low-quality, cheap swag that are of little real use. The origin of this conception can be traced back to all those companies that tried to go too cheap on this marketing tactics. In the process, they not only lost their own money (without gaining any real benefits), but also gave a bad name to the practice of using promo products as an effective marketing tool.
However, in order to receive maximum ROI on one’s send, businesses first need to make sure that the giveaways are practical and useful—in other words, things that people will use in their daily lives. A PPAI study reveals that a quality custom-printed reusable grocery bag receives on average close to 6,000 impressions throughout its lifetime. According to another study, tote bags receive an average 3,300 impressions in its lifetime. So, let’s say that the bag costs $5 and that will mean the marketer will need to spend no more than 2/10th of a cent per impression.
However, in order to make this happen, businesses must see to it that they are handing out quality products made from durable and long-lasting materials such as metal, wood, fleece, glass, etc. Take note, too, that the affair of quality extends to the design aspect of the products as well. And design means that the products need to be attractive and should appeal to the customers. However, that is not all. The design of the products also involves determining what will work best for the image of any given business as well as using state-of-the-art printing methods. The latter is important to make sure that important design elements of the product (color, shades, etc.) come out exactly as it is on the computer screen.
For example, leading promotional products companies like Promotions Warehouse use PMS colour system for custom printing all their products. In PMS or Pantone Matching System, the colour inks are already mixed before printing and this helps print the logo, phrase or any other set brand image of a business in exactly the same shade of colors as they are seen on the computer screen. This is important since even a slightly different shade of a yellow or red in a company logo (printed on a promo product) will create a dissonance in the consumer’s perception and that can affect the recognition aspect of the product at the same time as it may also hurt the image of the company in the consumer’s eyes.
The Ever-Widening Scope of Wholesale Promotional Products
Reading through the above requisites of a good and quality promotional product, one may start to wonder how to meet all those criteria without however breaking the bank on one’s promotional items marketing endeavor. Well, the answer is: by ordering promotional wholesale materials. From our above example of USB drives ordered wholesale, one can already gauge how much difference it can make price-wise when a business orders promo items in large bulks.
Now, of course, every promotional item is not meant for bulk ordering. However, a large majority of them are, especially in regard to all the items related to top- and mid-funnel sales cycle. You may not need all the items ordered for a single corporate gathering or fundraising event, etc., but you can always save up the rest for the next events. As long as you have a well-defined promotional products marketing strategy in place, you’ll never have to worry about any part of your wholesale promotional products going to waste.
