Five ways branded merchandise helps your small business
Often distributed to customers for free, branded merchandise helps businesses promote their events, corporate identities and brands.
Many notable businesses have been using branded merchandise as a marketing technique for many years. Promotional merchandise can range from corporate gifts to shopping bags, water bottles, plastic pens, and even memory sticks.
Typically, 80 percent of people choose to do business with the advertiser after receiving branded merchandise. Hence, it is no wonder why branded merchandise has recently risen in popularity, proving to be a successful marketing strategy.
So, should you consider using branded merchandise for your business? Here are a few reasons why you should.
1) It’s low-cost marketing
When it comes to promoting your business, only a few investments work and sound as good as branded merchandise. To begin with, it is a cost-efficient option. When your customers go out wearing or using an item that holds your logo or slogan, they are essentially promoting your brand to anyone they come across.
Every person individual who looks at your visual branding counts toward your advertising metrics’ effectiveness. So, think about how effective branded merchandise can be. Branded merchandise is also quite cheap to make. You will only be spending around a tenth of a cent per impression made.
2) It can help to build a strong branded identity
Branded merchandise gives consumers a glimpse of your company and what it does. It helps a lot as people are often interested in doing business with companies they already know.
Any item that flashes your brand logo and slogan effectively communicate your services, industry, product quality, and business values. In addition, such a subtle way of showing your company’s culture through material items can help your brand establish a decent fan base.
For instance, companies with smaller budgets can design custom logo ink pens and still enjoy a great increase in their marketing reach.
3) It’s an additional revenue stream
Did you know that branded merchandise could also act as an additional income stream? If your company already has a good reputation in the market, and if you have a strong fan base of people who admire what you do, perhaps, you could sell branded merchandise on the side. Besides boosting your marketing efforts, it can also significantly increase your revenue stream.
4) It builds customer loyalty
Branded merchandise gives your business a lot more personality and tangibility. For this reason, it’s greatly capable of offering strong loyalty or client retention to a brand. But that also means you should ensure that the promotional products you are giving away are innovative and well-planned.
Offering branded merchandise to your customers is a way of telling them that you care about them. The good thing is that people like receiving gifts. So, the branded merchandise creates a feeling of wanting to be able to give back to those people who receive them. Your customers give back by purchasing the products or services your business offers.
If you have ever been to a trade show, you might have noticed how people are more likely to visit booths that offer promotional products. They are even willing to listen to a pitch. Meaning branded merchandise makes the brand-consumer relationship more personal, and it is capable of turning customers into your brand ambassadors.
5) It creates brand recognition
As a business, your primary goal is to stand out from your competitors and build a strong reputation. And branded merchandise lets you do exactly this by applying your brand logo to any item a customer will use or wear in their everyday life. Not only does this remind the recipient of your brand continuously, but it also makes them more likely to remember you when they need a service or product you are offering.
With promotional merchandise, you get to reinforce your marketing message without bothering or burdening the customers. You continue living in their everyday life rent-free every time they notice the item with your brand logo on it.
Furthermore, many people say that their impression of a company becomes more favorable after receiving a branded item. Most people keep such promotional products for around two years if it’s something that’s useful to them.
Implement branded merchandising
To properly include branded merchandise in your advertising campaign, it is imperative that you first try to understand the benefits they offer.
Take your time learning about your target market and their need so you can offer them something that adds value to their lives. Remember that business cards no longer grab attention, but your customers will be more likely to keep them if you hand them out with promotional shirts, bags, or pens.
Photo by Jeremy Thomas
