How to improve brand awareness using promotional merchandise

When running a successful business, planning, and implementing a strong marketing strategy is key. Marketing is essential to exposing your business to a wider audience, the benefits of this is to gain brand recognition, impressions, and an increase in customers. To explain further, Adele Thomas, owner of Distinctive Confectionery, shares her expertise on how businesses can promote themselves further, using promotional merchandise.

Put your business in the spotlight

In a competitive industry such as confectionary this is vital to get your business name seen.  Promotional products have the ability to improve brand awareness through the inclusion of showcasing your businesses name and logo.

Additional benefits of promotional merchandise (for instance, personalized mugs) come from when an item you have customised, lands on a client’s desk or through a trade show, should they need a service you offer, your product is already front and centre, swaying their decision towards you first.

Get your brand past social media

The first thing many marketers might think to launch is an online campaign to gain engagement by creating a funny post but how easy is it to ignore it?

Marketing week reported 40% ignore social posts by brands. Promotional products are a great way to keep your business in the mind of customers. This is a fantastic way to engage with customers, achieve business exposure and if the customer likes your product they’ll remember your business. People forget the Facebook posts, newspaper ad’s but have a better chance of remembering your brand due to a physical item they can hold, which can’t simply be scrolled past!

Promotional products really do work!

It’s quite clear, promotional products really do work. According to a study undertaken by the PPAI 76.2% of people who received a promotional product in the last two years were able to remember the product and company.

This can have a huge impact on business success, if customers can remember your business for years to come, then the promotional product is clearly doing its job. Naturally, every business wants their customers to remember the quality of the service and/or products provided, and this alone can gain a new customer, or a few!

Promotional merchandise provides the highest rate of return on an investment. A pen is a pen, however a pen with a business logo on is a marketing tool that is highly effective.

Seeing the logo alone, will remind the customers of the experience and this could trigger them to view your website, your socials or make a purchase, and all this can happen because of something so simple.

To gain the most exposure from promotional materials, items should be branded correctly with any logos, your business website address, slogans or anything else you feel is important to expose. Recent studies inform that 58% of those who receive a promotional item keep and use it for three years if the item has a value, that’s three years business exposure and marketing on a minimal cost.

Not convinced yet? Here’s more to persuade you. Consumers are more likely to reach out to a business after receiving a promotional product from them compared to a business that doesn’t offer them. This is huge in a competitive market. You’ll gain sales over your competitors all because of something so simple yet effective, what’s not to like?

They make an impact too. Surveys show that 52% have a positive feeling towards a business after receiving a promotional item. Another marketing goal is being met in customer satisfaction and a happy customer is a returning one.

Overall promotional products, whether that’s stationary or confectionery can be a cost effective and easy way of exposing your business to the ideal customer. The correlation between product and success is evident so why not create your own promotional products and see the results for your business?