What to Tell Your Boss About Promotional Items

By Imogen Brown

So you've read all the pros and cons and you're convinced that promotional items will be a major marketing advantage for your corporation. Now you just have to convince your boss - or worse, the guys in finance - that using promo gifts 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, promo gifts 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 business products with direct mail offers, the responses are markedly higher. When people are asked about promotional merchandise 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.


2. Advertising with promo gifts 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 merchandise 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 promo items, your advertising costs could be a fraction of a penny per impression.


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


People like to do business with people that they like. Promotional products 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, promo merchandise can be used to start, continue and cement business relationships with all of your customers.


4. Promotional items can help establish your brand image.


The right promo 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 business gifts - even brand name products - 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.


5. Promotional business products offer a high return on investment, especially in light of continuing returns.

Some of the returns on business gifts 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 custom printed giveaways as thank you acknowledgments 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 business products 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.

Imogen Brown is the marketing manager for Clickpromogifts one of the UK's premier suppliers of promotional gifts and custom printed promotional products.