Promotional gifts complement traditional marketing methods

Some might say that promotional gifts perform exactly the same role as advertising or marketing, namely to promote a product, business or organisation. Yet promotional gifts often achieve results unobtainable by other forms of advertising and marketing through their unique ability to deliver – and keep – targeted messages directly in front of customers or prospects.Many businesses therefore turn to promotional gifts to help them enhance their brand awareness, improve customer loyalty and increase sales.This is particularly relevant in light of the fact that many of the more traditional forms of advertising and promotion, such as television and print, are losing ground to new digital media, which presents promotional gifts with an ideal opportunity to step in to fill the gap.Until recently, little research existed documenting the effectiveness of promotional gifts when compared to and combined with other forms of advertising. This led to a study* conducted by university researchers on behalf of PPAI in November 2006 which investigated the value of promotional gifts in today’s competitive marketplace. In short, the experiment concluded that promotional gifts may be effectively used as a stand-alone advertising medium; add to the media mix; serve as a useful information and reminder medium; enhance impressions about both the brand and product; and contribute to consumer intent to buy.Maximum impact, exposure and longevity will therefore be gained by carefully choosing promotional gifts that tie in to and support the advertising campaign. With promotional gifts shown to complement and actually increase the effectiveness of other advertising media, clever advertisers will opt for a combination of media. * Source: A PPAI study entitled How Promotional Products, Print and Television Advertising Impact Consumer Perception