Along with the BPMA, GoPromotional.com is excited to be celebrating Promotional Products Week from 16th – 20th September 2013. Here are some details about Promotional Products Week and why September is a great time to start planning on your promotional merchandise campaigns for the holidays and upcoming heavy conference and trade show season. Now is the time to take care of using up your end of the year budget in the last quarter and we know that promotional merchandise is well worth it with a high return on investment.
What is the objective of Promotional Products Week?
It’s simply to raise the profile of branded merchandise as an essential part of the marketing mix. We also want to enhance the understanding about the benefits of branded merchandise and what and how it can make a difference. Can you remember the last radio or series of TV ads? How about those engaging emails you receive? We are bombarded with thousands of messages every day, most of which don’t get our attention. A promotional product is far more powerful and engaging. Recent research from the BPMA has shown some interesting insights that prove that promotional gifts are kept for long periods of time and increase your brand awareness and improve sentiment towards the company the promotional merchandise came from.
What do companies use promotional gifts for ?
If you asked 10 people what they are using promotional gifts for, there would get a range of responses no doubt. Here are some of the top ways that companies use promotional merchandise”
- Brand Awareness
- New Product Launches
- Higher end gifts may be used as part of a dealer or reseller loyalty programme.
- One of the largest growing sectors of the promotional products market is referral, thank-you and apology gifts. It is pretty amazing to see how many companies specialise in the apology scheme industry –these are mostly banks, mobile phone companies, and utilities.
- It’s an important point though that in developing top customer service, it’s amazing what a small gift will do.
- When sales people go out to visit clients more and more of them will have branded folders, and may leave gifts with their clients.
- Service engineers will often have branded uniforms – it looks more professional and adds trust with the customer.
- The retail industry have adopted a more relaxed uniform now and often encourage staff to wear themed T shirts for example – Next Sale Starts on …, 10p off a litre of Tesco Fuel, ask us about our new reward card etc.
- Charities and pressure groups need to deliver important messages and reach donors so will use promotional branded gifts to raise awareness. They will also use this to add valuable revenue through resale. Macmillan Cancer for example raises millions through their national coffee morning and branded merchandise plays an important part of this success. The London Marathon is huge for merchandise, from banners, balloons, branded water, T shirts, and baseball caps.
- Branded merchandise can be a very effective premium for a brand for example the Tetley’s monkey, mug and tea towel were all featured as special retail packs and drove sales through the roof for the product. Other icons include the Andrex Puppy, the Churchill Insurance Dog and most notably were the Meerkats for the Compare the Market website. Over 1 million of the meerkats have already been dispatched and it’s been a core part of the brand message.
What are the top selling promotional items
Pens, bags, mugs and notebooks all consistently feature as popular products sold but given the market is over £750m and larger than the dating, and tea market, the range of products sold are wide and varied. The desk related gifts remain the highest application. There are more recycled products around in the last 3 or 4 years than there ever before. Notepads, pencils, pen pot holders would be typical examples.
If you require further information or have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to give a member of our experienced team a call on 0800 0148 970 or simply email us today.
