What to Tell Your Boss About Promotional Items

 Now you just have to convince your boss – or worse, the guys in finance – that using promotional items is a worthwhile use of your marketing and advertising budget. Here are some arguments you can use that will help them to see things your way (the right way, of course).

1. According to nearly every marketing study conducted, promotional items increase the effectiveness of advertising.

In marketing studies conducted both inside and outside the promotional industry, the results have always turned out the same. When companies include promotional items with direct mail offers, the responses are markedly higher. When people are asked about promotional items that they’ve received, nearly all of them can name the companies that sent them advertising gifts in the past twelve months, but few could recall the name of any company that they’d seen advertised in print in the past seven days. Promotional items are an effective way to increase the reach of your advertising.

1. Advertising with promotional items costs less per person reached than nearly every other form of promotion.

When you consider the length of time that most people keep and use the promotional items that they receive and earn, it actually costs far less to reach each possible customer than it costs for print advertising, television advertising or radio advertising. In fact, with the most popular and useful promotional items, your advertising costs could be a fraction of a penny per impression.

1. People buy more from people who give them free gifts.

People like to do business with people that they like. Promotional items offer many ways for companies to establish relationships with their customers that can last for years. From introductory gifts to thank you gifts to customer loyalty programmes, promotional items can be used to start, continue and cement business relationships with all of your customers.

1. Promotional items can help establish your brand image.

The right promotional items can help your company portray the image that your boss wants to project. You can raise your business profile, for instance, by choosing high quality promotional items – even brand name promotional items – and associating your company name with those items. When you associate your company name with the names of some of the leaders in sporting equipment, apparel and tools, part of their reputation for quality will rub off on your business.

1. Promotional items offer a high return on investment, especially in light of continuing returns.

Some of the returns on promotional items may be harder to quantify than increased sales or heightened visibility, but you’ll feel the difference in customer retention and repeat customers. When you use promotional items as thank you acknowledgements and buying incentives, you’ll create a powerful promotional tool that’s hard to overlook.

If that’s still not enough to convince your boss or financial officers that promotional items are the way to go, take them for a spin through the promotional catalogues of some of the finest UK promotional products suppliers. The wow factor may just do the trick when the appeal to reason doesn’t work.