2021 is beginning and the obvious question is: How are you going to promote your business to your customers and prospective clients over the next 12 months. As a promotions professional, I have some ideas for companies and organizations to consider as they look ahead to the New Year with the goal to maximize the opportunities available to them. Why include a promotional product as part of the planning for upcoming events? There are many reasons and here are a few key factors: Simply, promotional items communicate and talk to people. Customers like receiving them, promotional products make the experience more memorable, people keep them, people do business with organizations that provide promotional items, recipients have an immediate reaction when given one, they have a targeted message, and finally they enhance a campaign and keep your message in front of your targeted audience for long periods of time. It is important to understand that just putting a promotional item into a campaign will not insure success of the campaign. You want to integrate the promotional product into the campaign so it carries your message and when seen, reminds the recipient of your message, the experience and the brand. There are many ways to do this to make any message more impactful and remembered. To be clear, I am not talking about mass advertising to everyone in the world. Promotions are designed to be very specific and targeted at an identified audience who have an interest and can impact your business with an expected measured results. This could be a group of 50 or a 1,000 depending upon the audience you want to target. First, what are some of the truly achievable goals you may want to achieve. Here are some ideas to consider: Branding, Top of Mind Awareness with customers and prospects, Team building with employees, Special Events, Awards, Sales promotions, Donations, Purchases. Identifiable action. Next, look at the coming year and mark on a calendar when you feel specific promotions need to take place. For example, sales meetings, trade shows, product launches, team events, holidays, industry events such as nurses week, cancer month, start of school, anniversaries, non-profit organizations you support, holidays, company employee outings. Any event you want your targeted audience to specifically take notice of your message. Next, identify which events would benefit with the use of a promotional product as part of the promotion, advertising, marketing of the event. Probably all of them would, however, budget considerations, execution of the event, timing, and identifying the recipients could make the implementation not viable. Next, clearly state your message for each event or your overriding branding statement you want people to remember. You may not know exactly what the message is if the event is a few months away but have an idea as to what you want to convey to your audience. Which media are you going to use for each event, TV, radio, social media, print, direct mail, etc. Now the promotional product aspect of your marketing and branding efforts comes into play. The best events are the ones who you know who the participant will be. For example, team members or specific clients or customers. In these instances you have the option to personalize the item, making it more personal. For a trade show or other special event where you are meeting people for the first time or randomly, you want a specific and clear message letting them know what you want them to do. The item being handed out should have these two elements: First, should support your message by its features or uniqueness and second, be something the recipient would appreciate receiving. Here is the fun and creative part. You may want to enlist the assistance of a promotional product professional. To capture attention and notoriety, we want to be as creative as possible. This does not simply mean the promotional item which can be unique and standout, but the whole promotion itself including leading up to the event, the event itself, and the follow up process to keep the momentum moving forward. Several media tools should be used in conjunction with the promotion along with the promotional item with all focusing on the pre-determined message. There isn't room here to share the many different ways to use promotional items or the type of events that have successfully used them. (Name the event and a promotional item has been used.) Or, to list the thousands of products available that can enhance a message in a wide variety of ways. Or to discuss the types of programs where organizations have used promotional items that significantly impacted their message, brand, and top of mind awareness. What is important is to begin planning now, enlist the assistance of a promotions professional. This will allow you the opportunity to brainstorm with someone to discuss what is possible, bring in ideas and opportunities not thought would be possible and almost everything is if given the time to plan and create your unique message. Peter Fishburn Promotions Consultant 775-883-9428 [email protected] peterfishburn.espwebsite.com
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