The Promo Coach

Tradeshow events and other promotions have always proved a popular way for a company to promote and give that special touch. Most companies believe that promoting your company at events and shows will give you a unique way to increase your client database and generate new business for your company. As many people know, the difference between promotional gifts and corporate merchandise is the quality and engraving space. Corporate merchandise can offer clients and companies a much bigger and better engraving and branding area, which will allow you to stand out above everyone else.

Below are some corporate gifts that companies offer as best selling tradeshow gifts. Companies have used these successfully to promote themselves and their products or services. Are you looking for something fun and modern which can help your company stand out? Or do you need something modern and yet executive? For example, a sterling silver key ring can be the perfect gift for your company to use. Offering a massive impact, a sterling silver key ring is the ideal gift to use for any sort of promotion and will allow your company to make that special touch to any promotion.

Are you looking for a practical and yet still modern and very well used promotional gift? Then a promotional pen should be at the top of your list. With a good engraving space down the barrel of the pen, your promotion can be sure it will have success written all over it.
Are you looking for something that will cause a noise with your promotion? Then a promotional whistle key ring is the perfect gift to get your company noticed and heard in any business situation. With a good branding area, your company can be sure to get a good promotional message added onto this item!

Today we live in a world of competition, so if you want to score extra points ahead of your competitor in the market, you obviously need to offer a little extra. By providing a promotional gift, a corporate organization is actually increasing its sale opportunities by generating awareness and promoting its own goods or services. This is one of the reasons why such gifts are given away; they seem like a reasonable price to pay for increasing profits.

A corporate promotional gift helps to create as well as strengthen the brand image of any company. For example if it is a new company, then giving away these gifts can not only please the people, but also let them know about the launch of a particular product of the brand or the company. If the company already has an established brand name in the market, then the gift will only re-enforce the brand’s identity, help promote further sales, and help refresh the memories of clients and potential customers by generating buzz about the particular brand.

Giving out gifts helps create goodwill among the people who matter to the organization. This means the employees of the organization, the investors in the company, the company’s existing clients as well as potential customers. It’s an easy way to remind your employees that you care and it helps express your gratitude towards your investors.

If the company is planning to have some major or even minor changes in their products or services, then giving out corporate promotional gifts might actually be a great way to communicate the change to the employees and clients, as well as to investors. These gifts have been effectively and popularly used as a medium to communicate to all the people - be it the clients, employees, investors, or potential clients. Communication is one of the important tasks accomplished by such promotional tactics. So get in the game and get your promotional products out there!

Seminars are a cost effective way to capture a target audience with a message or to offer them a specific call to action. A seminar’s timeliness and its relevance to customer needs are important in achieving the impact you want. Seminars are meant to inform attendees about products, services, or solutions they may be interested in purchasing. High quality seminars can provide the kind of value that leads to more purchases. The timing, location, and topic of a seminar should all be planned in advance. This allows you enough time to prepare your approach and to create defined messages to present to your audience.

Seminars should promote essential product takeaway messages to your guests, and they should finish with an obvious “call to action” or guide the audience on how to take the next actionable step. The information should motivate them to purchase or at least evaluate your products.

To host a successful seminar it is important to define your goal and to consider your business objective. Create a strong message that clearly shows the value you want to deliver. Determine if you are prepared to follow up with customers that show interest, and if you are ready for additional business. When you’re amid the rush of making phone calls, arranging, preparing, organizing, and choosing the right promotional items, location and presentation equipment, don’t loose sight of the major issues. These main issues are the entire reason you are holding a seminar.

Find a professional yet comfortable venue to hold your seminar. Develop an effective and efficient registration process to capture information about the attendees and to create another opportunity for communicating with your customers. Make sure you offer your customers several methods of responding to you such as telephone, email, fax, or even regular mail.

Once you have identified your objective, it’s a good idea to choose your topic. Promote your strengths and core competencies while you’re presenting. It’s crucial to tailor the subject to their needs and to convey your message to them clearly. Make sure it is relevant to your particular audience. Although everyone likes cool or fancy promotional gifts, you will still need to provide engaging, interesting, and relevant content to be successful and to get your audience to purchase or take the next step.

Promotional products help businesses all over the world get noticed. They work great as promotional giveaways at tradeshows and as appreciation gifts for employees, associates, vendors, and suppliers. The product you choose is important and so is what you imprint on it. When selecting the best item, it’s a good idea to research and explore all of your options. With experience, you’ll find that some products will work for you and others just won’t. You’ll also see that some products work best when they’re used together.

Promotional product pairs highlight the features of one another, complement each other, and work together for optimal use. The promotional notepad is a great giveaway product that can be transformed into a nice promotional package with the addition of a custom imprinted pen. This combination can impress your customers and will provide them with a practical and reliable gift. It is small enough to just simply toss in your bag, yet it is large enough to hold adequate content. Such a handy duo can be used as a tradeshow promotional gift for enhanced success and brand awareness. Tradeshow visitors will appreciate it during their busy day and your company will get great exposure through its ongoing and widespread use.

Another great promotional pair is the custom water bottle that comes with an imprinted towel. This promotional set works nicely together at the beach, on a basketball or tennis court, in the gym, or on a football or soccer field. Water bottles can be a great resourceful item. In addition, while you’re on the beach or sweating it up at the gym, a promotional towel can be well put to use. Towels have a large imprint area, which allows for maximum exposure. The water bottle and towel combination are suitable year round and perfect for any corporate event.

An interesting promotional product combo is the custom imprinted keychain and promotional tote bag. Everyone has a set of keys so why not give your customers something they can definitely use? So when you’re deciding on the perfect giveaway item, consider a promotional pair. That way you can show your clients that you’ll go that extra mile for them and your company will receive double exposure and advertising!

Why should you consider choosing golf gifts to promote your business? There are nearly an infinite range of corporate gifts for your clients and employees. So what is the appeal of golf? In the past few years, golf has been a fast growing sport among adults. Although the craze has cooled off a little, it will burgeon again as the baby boomers continue to age and move away from more strenuous sports, like tennis and bowling. There are various golf items that are typically used and needed by golfers and these products are great for spreading your brand awareness. No golfer can ever have too many golf balls and they make a great gift. Just add your corporate or product logo, personalize with the client’s initials, and they will remember you fondly.

Executive boxes are commonly offered by many major golf courses and are great promotional items. These boxes can include branded high quality golf balls, tees, and emblems of the club. Tee bars are popular and inexpensive; they are plastic tee carriers that fit in the player’s pocket or clip on to their belts so new tees are always easily and quickly within reach. Shoe bags are another great option. The golfer can store soiled golf shoes in a small zip up bag and toss them in the trunk.

A recent golf innovation is a portable putter. Golfers sometimes take their putters along on business trips in hopes of getting in some practice on the putting green. A portable putter quickly and efficiently disassembles into smaller parts, and will fit into a small carry on. This can be a high-end, expensive promotional gift for more serious golfers who travel a lot. Another popular item often used in golf promotion is a quality polo shirt with a logo and even with initials for your top customers. Also sun visors are a common part of usual golf attire, especially for women. Socks can also be appreciated golf apparel.

Finally, no golfer should head out to the course without an umbrella. There are many available that telescope down to tiny dimensions and hook right onto golf bags. So get in the game and choose some gifts that are up to par with the today’s trends!

These days, business cards are much more than just a means of providing contact information. They are a critical part of the marketing process. Besides having the usual information, like your company’s name and phone number, the current competitive marketing industry requires that a business card do much more than just relay the basics. They are commonly being used as promotional products – and if they aren’t, then maybe you should polish up your business card and catch up with the times! Your cards should ensure that you and your business are represented as a company that offers valuable, high quality products or services. You should maximize your potential to increase business or brand awareness with your cards.

Business card styles have transformed and moved beyond the standard size. Many companies are creating slightly larger cards. Also, some are printing their information vertically, rather than horizontally, so that it will stand out more. The numerous varieties of cards that are available and the options for card materials are very appealing. For instance, there is a fold-over card that is rising in popularity. Here, the front and back are like a traditional business card, but it opens up with an inside that contains additional information. This type of card is visually similar to a brochure that is used as a promotional item. Having a double-sided business card can also look impressive, and it may even be necessary if you have a lot of information that won’t easily fit on a standard card.

Distribute your business cards by using promotional marketing techniques. Hand them out as often as you can and to everyone, whether the person is a professional or a potential consumer. In a situation that requires leaving a gratuity, tip generously and include your business card. Pass your business cards out in elevators, in taxis, on airplanes, standing in line, or in any other situation where you may need to wait or be in an uncomfortable silence. If you plan to market your business by sending out promotional gifts, make sure to include your business card with the gift.

It is worth it to spend time making a powerful business card. Your business cards are a way of marketing - so keep them everywhere as you’ll never know when or where an opportunity to use them will pop up!

Trade shows are one of the most powerful marketing tools available. Every category of manufactured goods have trade shows, also most professional organizations from medicine, pharmaceuticals and engineering employ this venue to publicize new products and services. This is a venue where it pays to get everything right.

Book hour shows well in advance and work close with the event organizer. Make sure your booth will be ready and reliable shipping has been arranged. Have travel arrangements booked along with accommodations for your people. Plan a press release and high tech marketing aids, typically videos on large flat screens with surround-sound will get extra attendance.

Offer some attractions such as meeting the CEO, having a drawing for a door prize, or if budget allows offering a hospitality suite where you can get some one-on-one personal face to face time for a select group of important targeted customers.

Everyone attending will expect some promotional gifts; this is worth some extra attention. Find an item that won’t end up in the trash. Find something that will stay with a customer and keep your logo in front of them. Baseball caps with your logo have proven longevity after the show. Umbrellas are also a lasting giveaway. In the novelty area, light liquid activated shot and drinking glasses are an attention grabber. As soon as liquid is poured into the glass a blinking fading multicolor display appears.

Everyone uses computers so let your booth give away USB flash drives or at a lower price point, give out some screen dusters; these will probably be kept and used. There are custom imprinted mouse pads and USB flexi-lights that can light up your keyboard when you are flying at night. They are powered through the USB port and contain several LED lights that can illuminate a laptop keyboard. Whatever gifts you choose, remember to plan early, organize and promote, promote, promote.

As your business grows and the quality of your marketing becomes increasingly important to your continued expansion, you will inevitably ask yourself how best to organize your marketing functions. Given that marketing spend is often the second largest variable expense after suppliers, the importance of this question cannot be overestimated. When buying a promotional gift, the first thing to consider is what your business’s major challenge is. Are you distinguishing yourself from the competition? Extending your brand into other markets? Increasing customers’ lifetime value? Lowering the cost of customer acquisition?

What should you look for when choosing a company to supply your corporate gifts? There are many of the same considerations as when we choose any company to supply an organization with goods and services. But here are a few tips to help you make the right decision!

Contact them before your order. New business is the lifeblood of any company, and if the speed of response is poor, imagine what it will be like once you’ve placed your order. Check out the client list and testimonials – check the website for testimonials; if there aren’t any it doesn’t mean you won’t get good service, but if they are there it should give you a degree of confidence. Find out their track record. How much experience in supplying promotional products and business gifts do they have?

Is stock held on site? If not it could mean problems down the line. What about branding – is it done on site or subcontracted? Again sub-contracting such an integral part of the service means the company is not in total control. Look into accreditation and determine if they have received any prominent awards. Remember, when you use gifts to communicate with your customers your brand reputation is on the line. So choose the right vendor to make sure your promotion runs smoothly, on time, and within budget.

As you dig deeper inside the world of promotional gifts, you will discover a lot of things to think about. Even if you have determined who your customers are, the things they would like, and the gifts you plan to use for your marketing campaign, you still have a lot of work to do.

First of all, you have to purchase the items without going over your budget. Find out what fits with your company’s image and how you can get the items into the hands of your customers. Of course you can’t just buy items and store them in your stock room. The most important part of your campaign is distributing these products to your customers! You can give them not just to your existing clients, but to prospective customers as well. After all, the key objective for your campaign should be to raise awareness about your brand and get your name and logo out there.

There are many ways to achieve this. You could create activities that will target many people. Conferences and exhibitions are perfect for distribution of promotional items. There will surely be masses of people walking around. What’s best in these events is that the types of people you meet usually belong to your target market.

If you only have a small enterprise or if you have a tight budget, you can get some students or your family and friends to distribute them to your customers. Also bear in mind that your customers have other relatives and friends too. So if you give a few gifts to them, they might give these out to others. Thus, your giveaways spread out even without your help.

Using these gift-giving techniques in the long run will be the key factor to increasing revenue, profits, and turnover. It goes without saying that a vital component of your campaign is to reach your target market. And the most low-cost and effective way for you to do that is through distributing gifts.

Everyone likes to receive a free gift, so why not use this to your advantage? There are many ways to use promotional gifts to attract customers, not just to your offline business but to your website as well. You can utilize a form by having potential customers sign up to receive news or updates about your company and then give them a small token of appreciation for doing so.

You don’t have to give them something that costs a lot of money. The possibilities are endless, and include such items as bumper stickers, pencils, pens, key chains, sports bottles, and small tote bags. Most of these items are very affordable, especially when purchased in bulk, and they will bring your clients back to see what you have in store for them. If they sign up for your newsletter, you can obtain valuable customer contact information, like their name, address, telephone number, and email address. That way, you can unobtrusively send them emails regarding sales, new products, and any other relevant information that you want your customers and prospects to know.

The best thing is that each promotional item will have your company name and logo imprinted on the product. So every time they use your free gift, they will remember which company gave it to them and will return to learn more about what is happening.

Contests are great incentives for giving away free branded gifts and for bringing customers back. You can have a contest to learn which of your products are the most interesting, or what offers people would like to see from your company. Inform your visitors that by participating in the contest their name will be placed in a drawing to win a gift. Many unique gifts are suitable for this type of contest such as t-shirts, travel mugs, mouse pads, stress toys, and more. Just remember, each gift you give will in return give you repeat customers that have your image branded in their minds!