How to boost your brand awareness through social media and promotional products

Want to give your marketing and sales a boost? Here’s how to grow brand awareness through social media and promotional products.

To promote interest in your brand, you need to be able harness a number of different marketing channels. And that doesn’t just mean embracing Instagram Stories – traditional methods of marketing can be just as effective as the current trends.

To demonstrate the appeal of both old and new marketing methods, we explore how you can use social media and promotional products to increase brand awareness and improve sales.

Social media

In the era of social media, when a viral joke or video can catapult your brand from relative obscurity to ubiquity, it seems like anyone should be able to harness its immense power to grow their customer base.

The reality, however, isn’t quite so simple. Having a social media presence is essential: the sheer size of the audience makes it imperative. Plus, most people can’t go much longer than a couple of hours before reaching for their smartphones to browse Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

But turning interactions on social media into sales is much harder than you may think.

Typically, the best way to see real progress is to invest in paid advertising on social media sites. First, you need to determine your target demographic. If you’re a retailer of children’s beds, for example, you might want to target 28-35-year-old women, who are more likely to be in the market for your primary product offering.

Social media advertising gives you the opportunity to gain visibility from audiences that you know are interested in your product or service, and is therefore the most likely to yield positive results.

Promotional products

Tangible, promotional products passed around from person-to-person might seem like an anachronistic marketing technique, but it can be incredibly effective – even in the era of social media.

There’s a reason so many businesses bombard companies with merchandise bearing their insignia. Pens, keyrings, erasers and lanyards are all popular choices. And while they might seem inconsequential, they are a startlingly cheap way to stick in people’s mind for weeks, months and even years to come.

Promotional materials are also a great way to transform a fleeting interaction at a workshop, conference or networking event into a long-lasting, tangible reminder of your business for possibly years to come.

While someone might not remember the details of your conversation (the number of conversations you go through at a networking event renders the details of each individual conversation almost impossible to recall), the pen, lanyard, or notepad you pass to them will act as a constant reminder of your business. Handing out customised silicone wristbands at UK events works in exactly the same way.

Combine social media and promotional products for a powerful sales strategy

Having a presence on social media is essential, and making use of its precisely targeted advertising is a great way to encourage sales. Equally, creating and giving out promotional products to potential customers remains a massively useful marketing method for any business owner.

Combined, the two strategies can help boost your marketing efforts, grow interest in your brand and improve sales.

Photo by Dmitry Sovyak