Promotional Products: Create Advertising Tools that Sells

Unlike general advertising, the creative aspect of direct marketing usually is not intended to inform, entertain, or build awareness. The objective is to sell, to get an order or have the consumer take some other specific action. However, there’s a lot to the selling process than just combining nice-sounding words and pretty pictures. You have to develop a creative strategy and one area to explore is the use of effective promotional products as advertising tools.

Gain, think about the creative strategy.  Try to come up with a “big idea” you want to get across in each promotional item you give.  Then get an experienced direct response writer to prepare copy that captures the prospect’s attention, weaves a strong selling design story, and calls for action.  And don’t be reluctant to use novel promotional products.  It often takes a fascinating promotional product design to get people talking about your product or service.  And if, it is creative enough to hold their interest, prospects will appreciate the gift.

Graphics are also an important part of the creative-selling process.  Their job is to capture on promotional item the excitement of your product or service and the benefits of your proposition.  Graphics should be in character with your company’s image, the nature of the product or service being offered, and the profiles of the markets being reached.

Choose promotional items that fit your product objective

Almost every medium offers a wide variety of formats.  Your choice of promotional product design can range from inexpensive pens to the more costly executive leather-bound organizers.  Which type of promotional item to use depends on several factors.  Of course, you will have to abide by the constraints of your budget.  You’ll want to consider how many of the same design are you planning to give away. 

And you want to keep your marketing objective in mind.  If you are soliciting inquiries rather than orders, you normally need a less elaborate design for a promotional product because your goal is to tell only the important information about your product or service; to whet the consumer’s appetite for more information. 

And your audience is also important.  Do you want a promotional product that will stand out among many other promotional items on a businessperson’s desk? Or is it designed for leisurely using by the consumer at home or at play.

A note on the good idea behind promotional products

It takes more than just a “good idea” to launch your promotional products as one core strategy in your marketing plan.  There’s a lot to think about, really.  To sort out and organize your thinking, it is best that you put your plan on paper.  Your written plan does not have to be elaborate.  But it should cover such factors as the concept, rationale, market segment, competition, proposed operation as well as problem areas. 

Coming up with promotional products as a way to advertise your business requires that you do this “mini marketing plan.”  Sure there is work to do but it can help clarify a lot of critical thinking.  Bear in mind also that there is cost involved in this project, so you don’t your money wasted on a marketing effort that is not worth doing, in the first place.