Increasing the Perceived Value of your Promotional Products

Making your promotional products truly memorable can be somewhat difficult when you give these items in a casual manner. This is where the value of presentation comes into play. If you present your promotional products in a memorable fashion, the products you’re distributing are more likely to make a bigger impact on the recipients.

Consider, for example, a mail-out paper or cardboard desk top calendar. A large proportion of companies send gifts such as these out at the end of the year. Given that the people you send these items to might receive two or three other calendars in addition to yours, what can you do to increase the likelihood that they will use your calendar and not one sent by another company?

The answer is simple—present your item in a way that gives it a higher perceived value. This doesn’t mean you have to buy more expensive items, just that you’ll benefit from presenting them in a more attractive package. One easy way to do this is to purchase colored envelopes, perhaps in your own company color scheme, that make your calendars stand out from the typical junk mail that people receive every day.

This approach will work well for a mail-out promotion, but if you’re giving promotional products face-to-face, a little more creativity is in order. The idea with casual promotional gift giving is often that you create the impression of giving a high value product, even if the item is actually quite inexpensive. Perceived value and real value are very different---and there are some subtle but effective ways to increase the perceived value of an item.

This can be as simple as offering a person an item that they need but don’t have on hand. For example, a client you’re meeting with may need a pen—and of course, you are just the person to supply it. The pen may have cost much less than ¤1.00, but by offering it at the right time, it has become much more valuable than it really is. Better yet, you’ve given your client a gift that they’ll continue using, and they’ll be reminded of your company every time the pen is used.

This is a much more effective method of delivering a promotional product than, for example, simply asking your client “do you want a pen?” They’ll probably say yes, even if only to be polite, but the gift is less likely to be remembered, just because they had no real need for a pen when you offered it. That doesn’t mean they won’t appreciate the item at all, but they’ll appreciate it more if they actually need the pen when you offer it to them. This kind of attention to detail is something that will help you get the most out of your promotional products. You’re spending money on these products, so it only makes sense to get the most benefit out of them that you possibly can.