How Creative Promotional Products Boost Your Marketing
Bored with your promotional products?
If you are, you can bet your customers and prospects are too.
Branded merchandise is an essential piece in your marketing tool belt. The classic trade show pen or cause tee are great at increasing brand awareness with your customer base.
But sometimes your marketing just needs a little more oomph. And that’s where creative promotional products step in to steal the show.
How do they do it?
Creative promotional products differ from traditional branded merchandise in that they expand your customers’ perception of what’s possible. By, sometimes literally, breaking the mould of what a promotional product is.
When paired with creative promotional products, your marketing strategy will have a greater reach and resonate more effectively with your audience.
But how?
Creative promotional products catch the eye
Awareness!
Whether brand, or product, your marketing’s purpose is to get the message out to the right people at the right time.
Top- and bottom-funnel strategies benefit from creative merchandise because promo that stands out gets the impressions and attention you’re looking for.
Additionally, your merchandise can create conversation with something your audience has never seen before. Like the racer-back wine cooler we created for ASICS, for example.
Unique merch works because it cuts through the mundanity of your competitor’s campaigns with a laser focus on your unique brand and message.
They bring your message to life
Creative promotional products are a real-life reminder of your brand. A physical token of who you are and what you’re about.
From studies we know that tactile experiences improve recall. Turning touchable branded elements into a marketing tool is called tactile marketing and it is super effective in our digitally-driven world.
Explained simply, whenever your prospect holds your promotional product, they remember your brand and how they felt when they received it.
These emotional connections, facilitated by branded merchandise, encourage your audience to act. Whether that action is to make a purchase, book a discovery call, or consider a change – like our Choose Tap clients.
They create a community
Human connections are powerful.
If your marketing strategy is to move away from a transactional relationship with your clients, you need to deepen your brand connection. You can do that by building a community around your brand. In turn you’ll increase the number of returning customers, brand ambassadors and ongoing referrals.
One way to create a community is through shared, on-brand experiences.
Picture this: It’s Australia Day, 2015. You’re on Cottesloe beach, WA, along with 2,210 others attempting a world record with inflatable flip flops.
The Havaianas Thong Challenge was described as one of the most “enduring examples of experiential marketing.”
Except it wasn’t just experiential. These unique marketing strategies are unifying.
Havaianas customers weren’t only interacting with the brand, but with each other. And they took away both a physical reminder of the event, and the positive memories they shared.
How to boost your marketing
Now you know how they work, how do you incorporate more creative promotional products into your marketing?
First: Define your moment.
At Impact, we’re big believers in the key moments when your brand comes to life for your customers and clients.
For Havaianas, it was the Calendar-Based Event – Australia Day. Their customers are out in the sunshine, enjoying the beach, a barbeque with family and friends. They know that their brand shines in these situations, with Australia Day being the ultimate opportunity.
For Choose Tap, their moment is in Educational Campaigns. And ASICS, Rewards.
Most brands have at least two of the eight key moments. Click the link below to find out more and identify yours.
Secondly, you wouldn’t be a great marketer if you didn’t understand your audience and what they want in these moments. Your marketing campaigns and strategies are already designed to tap into those wants and needs and present your brand as the answer.
This is also where your creative promotional products can help.
Whether by enhancing the brand experience, answering your audience’s questions in new and exciting ways, or creatively solving any one of their problems.
What are the best creative promotional products for my brand?
It can be easy to get caught up in this question. The great thing is that your options are endless. But that can also lead to analysis paralysis.
We have a few resources you can use to narrow down what you’re looking for. We’ve written an article and a shot a video to nudge you in the right direction.
But if you don’t have the time to flesh out the campaign, plan the event, and juggle the merch all on your own – let us do the leg work.
Just click on the Merch Matcher™ link below and answer a couple of questions about your brand and objectives. Make sure you answer is “5” or “6” on question 4 and we’ll come back to you with our recommendations and pricing.
Or, you can book in 15 minutes to talk to our experts face to face (or screen to screen). Creative promotional products are our speciality and we’d love to help.
