Promotional materials are good investments – but choose wisely

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Promotional materials are good investments – but choose wisely

Whether you’re a global company or a small business, advertising is necessary to maintain clients and attract new ones. Supplementing your marketing strategies with promotional items is a key component to good advertising. Promo materials cost-effectively market your brand to a large –and ever-changing group of people.  All it takes is a one-time investment, with the help of a public relations Omaha professional.  

What separates promotional materials from advertisements is their physicality and shelf life. While print or electronic ads are noninteractive and have a limited time span in which customers can engage with them, there’s no such restraint with promotional items. Objects that can be used or worn make more of a lasting impact on a user than a two-dimensional advertisement, and monthly or quarterly ad space requires monthly or quarterly payments. You pay for promotional materials once while continuing to reap the benefits for the life of the product.  

Additionally, promotional items do not have geographic or demographic limitations. Once a promo item makes its way into the world, it takes on a life of its own, often passing from the original recipient to someone else. This organically increases your business’s visibility in a way that simply can’t be done with other advertising strategies

However, public relations Omaha experts suggest to invest in promotional materials wisely. How often have you gone to a trade show and had to politely refuse some promotional material because you knew you were never going to use it? Many promotional materials fall into the same trap: a profound lack of ingenuity and an understanding that a promotional object’s utility increases the likelihood it will be used –and the more an item is used, the more your brand awareness expands. This is where a well thought out  marketing strategy is integral, and where you have some breathing room to potentially get creative. Always keep in mind the scope of your business when planning a promotional strategy. 

For example: If you’re a contractor or carpenter, a promotional pen or notepad is fine. People still use these things, of course. But if you want to maximize your investment, consider instead a level or measuring tape with your business’s logo and website on it. This is an object specific to your business, and someone using a tape measure is arguably more likely to remember your business than if you simply slap your logo onto a pen. 

While classic items like pens have a solid history of impressive ROI, many other items do as well. Instead of a standard pen, consider a pen/stylus combo  while the additional investment is minimal, this increases the object’s usefulness, hence your brand’s visibility. USB drives are still used, though with a growing number of cloud-based business systems, that most likely won’t always be the case. Public relations Omaha professionals suggest, consider a power bank  a standalone case that can charge your electrical items free of an outlet, a vital tool for busy people. Outerwear and performance wear: t-shirts, windbreakers, and hats  remain sound investments. Phone cases and drinkware continue to generate high impressions. 

So whether you’re going the traditional route or the creative, business-specific one, there’s no real wrong way to handle promotional campaigns, provided you get the materials out of your hands and into the customer’s, whether it be a long-standing customer or a future one. Once you do that, your brand awareness and brand loyalty  is sure to increase.