Branded products are excellent for spreading your name. Customers and clients will more readily recognize your brand if they view it daily on their pens and calendars; perhaps more importantly, this will also help your business stay at the forefront of their minds during longer buying cycles. Here are a few ways that branded products can improve your business this year.
4. Highly Used Items are Highly Visible
People love to receive free items: from frisbees to t-shirts, coffee mugs to promotional calendars, people love collecting free gear at conventions, meetings, and offices. By handing out free stuff, you can make immediate friends, gain loyal customers, and help your brand reach maximum exposure.
A free t-shirt or pen will be used eventually. The customer might wear it to a store where hundreds of other customers will see it, or pull out your pen to write a check in a busy bank. Everyone who sees it will slowly begin to recognize your brand. And the ones who already recognize it will be subtly reminded of it.
3. Recognition Helps You Become a Household Name
Building name recognition means that everyone exposed to your branded products could eventually refer to your brand as a household name. Think about Coke or Pepsi: how much free stuff have you gotten with their logos over the years, and how willing are people to buy their branded products because they are loyal?
By getting your name out there and building familiarity, you too can eventually become so enticing that customers will buy your branded products and do your advertising for you.
2. Products Can Point to the Web
Advertising online is cheap, and it’s easy to develop great websites to get all of your information out there. Your branded products should and could point to your web information. A small desktop calendar or pen can have a website address or QR code to take customers to your hub. Once there, customers can quickly learn about your company, products, and goals.
When customers visit your site they can buy your products, share your articles with friends (increasing your exposure exponentially on social networks), and apply for jobs. Customers will learn to recognize your brand name quickly, and will become more loyal if they enjoy your goods.
1. Branded Items Create Familiarity
When you give away branded items (or even selling them to loyal brand advocates) you’re actively building familiarity and trust for your logo and style. In turn, this means they’ll be more comfortable buying from your company and trusting your sales representatives. Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; more often than not, it breeds a sense of comfort and loyalty. This has been proven time and time again, and it can work for your company.
Picture a teen who wears a truck brand’s t-shirt once a month. When he’s ready to go out and buy a truck, which brand will seem familiar and comfortable to him? Inevitably, people stick to what they know, whether they know it from experience or from their pen.
Using branded products to increase business and company name recognition just makes sense. Customers and clients will enjoy your novelty goods, and you will earn more money. Remember only to use high quality freebies so that customers correlate your name with good stuff.