Promotional products are a good way to get your name out, make your audience happy, bring in new customers, and make employees feel important. But like any marketing tool, they’re not perfect. They can be employed incorrectly and when that happens you won’t get the return on investment you’re looking for.
In this article, we’ll go over some of the most common mistakes we see when people try to use promotional marketing. Knowing these mistakes will help you avoid them. But first, let’s talk about goal setting because without a goal you won’t know whether your swag is effective or not.
All Promotional Products Need a Job
You will never know if your swag did what you wanted or not if you don’t know what it is you want your products to do. Everything needs a goal. Are you ordering swag because:
- you want people to know about your company or what you do
- you’ve rebranded and want the world to know
- you’re rewarding employees for a good year
- you’re welcoming new employees on and want them to immediately be brought into the employee community
- swag attracts attention and you want people at your trade show booth
- you want them to remember you
- it’s a thank you for purchase
- it’s intended to move them down the sales funnel
- you’re using it as an award or a thank you for loyalty
Each of these reasons requires a different approach and most likely a different budget. For instance, if you want your promotional item to move someone down a sales funnel and cause them to come closer to purchasing your product or service, it had better be a worthwhile gift. A sticker is not very likely to convince someone to buy a car. But a sticker is great at making a child feel special and/or enticing them to bring mom or dad to your booth at the local fair.
Once you have swag in place and you’ve made a selection based on what you want it to accomplish, you want to measure its success. How you do this also depends on your goal. For instance, if you want people to get to know you, you could measure how much swag you give away and whether you see any of it out in your community. You could also attach a discount coupon or code to it and see how many of them are used versus how many of them you gave out.
Now that you know the preliminaries that you should consider with swag, let’s talk about some of the most common promotional product mistakes we see and how they can be avoided.
14 Most Common Mistakes in Swag
Not knowing what you want the item to do for your marketing.
All marketing needs a goal. If you don’t have one how can you know if you were successful or not?
You aren’t set up to track your goal in any way.
With swag, it can be difficult to know if it’s doing its job but there are some indicators like an uptick in sales or new sales from a different demographic. Or as we mentioned above, a specific coupon code affiliated with your giveaway. At the very least, your swag tracking should involve how many items you’re giving away.
Your swag isn’t tied to your demographic.
You swag won’t work effectively if it ends up in the wrong hands or in a giveaway pile. It must match the needs and desires of your audience. For instance, some people are tempted to giveaway those cute “flinging monkeys.” They’re perfect for family events. I’ve been to trade shows where they run through them in the first thirty minutes of the show. They’re very popular. They also, more times than not, end up as a souvenir for attendees’ kids. In the child’s room, they have absolutely no marketing value. In fact, they may actually have a negative impact if mom or dad spends every night picking it up off of the floor and getting angry about having to do so.
Your print area isn’t big enough for your name or complex logo.
Small space needs a short name or easy logo. To try and place long company names or a complicated logo into a small space means at best, it will look crowded. At worst it will be blurred and unrecognizable.
Missing misspellings and Typos.
This is one of the worst because it renders the product useless. No one wants to use something with a blatant mistake on it. When providing art or copy to a promotional products company like ThinkQuik, it’s essential you double and triple check everything, including the proof before the item is created. We check too but there are some things we simply won’t know is a typo like someone’s name.
Not allowing enough time for delivery.
Not only will this one negatively impact your budget, but it may also affect the quality of your item and its availability. If you’re trying to rush it and rush approvals, something critical could be missed or messed up.
Selecting a promotional products company off the web without any knowledge of the company.
Swag is an easy business to start. All you need is a web address and some products. Because of this, there are a lot of swag companies that go in and out of business. It’s important to know who you’re dealing with. Do a little research and make sure you’re selecting a company that can meet your needs and do it right. If they don’t, make sure you understand their guarantees. I’ve known a lot of people who bought on price, only to find out their chosen promotional product company went out of business before they shipped their product. Yikes!
Not checking the proof.
Some people don’t think this is an important step or they think they checked it sufficiently when they uploaded or agreed to the project in the first place. Always double-check that proof. You have very little recourse when you sign off on a proof. If it’s wrong after that, it’s on you.
Buying on budget alone.
Yes, your budget is important but you also want an effective promotional product. We’re not saying you should spend a lot on swag. But consider what it is you want that swag to do for you and budget accordingly. Also, you don’t have to give the same item out for everyone. You can give less expensive items out as a branding exercise and give out t-shirts to your most loyal customers.
Not linking your swag to your sales cycle.
As mentioned above, a sticker won’t get you the sale but it might get you the introduction. It’s important that as people get further along in the buying cycle, or if you have a very expensive product or service, that you give something fitting for that occasion.
It’s junk.
Okay, it pains us. But it must be said. Some swag is junk and it has nothing to do with the cost. Let me explain.
All swag should do at least one of three things. It should be:
- useful
- entertaining/funny
- something your ideal demographic wants
Your swag may be junk if you don’t match it to the needs and desires of your market. it can also be junk if you’re buying just to buy. Have you ever given a present at the last minute and you don’t think about the meaning or the recipient, you just buy it to get it done so you don’t show up without a gift? It’s probably not going to resonate much with the recipient because you put very little thought into it. The same is true of swag. You’ll get more marketing bang if you think about it.
Another thing to consider, if one vendor has something much cheaper than everyone else, you might want to ask why. If you buy too cheap and your item breaks minutes after the recipient gets it, they may transfer that thought about cheap junk onto your company.
You don’t have a distribution plan.
Where are you giving the swag away? Who’s getting it? Is your swag item large and are most of the recipients traveling to the event by plane? If so, there may be space concern. You must know and consider these details. Don’t order if you don’t have a plan in place.
You forget to put the most important information on it.
Have you ever watched a commercial and been left guessing up until the end what the product or service is? Or sometimes you see a web pop-up inviting you to do something and you have no idea what that truly is? This happens so often with swag. People will place their name on something or a clever tag line and forget critical information like an address.
That’s not to say every piece of swag needs an address but some of them do if you want them to be their most effective.
The item doesn’t fit the event.
I know a lot of people want to use the swag they have left over from a previous event and I’m not saying it should go to waste. But sometimes there’s a large disconnect when you do that. For instance, let’s say your promotional item is a beach giveaway that was for a summer kickoff party you were having. Then in August, you attend a trade show and figure because you have beach balls left over, you can just bring them. I would venture to guess that your beach balls were a bigger hit at your summer launch than your trade show. If you’re going to reuse an item, make sure it makes sense for the other event. Otherwise, it will look like you’re serving leftovers.
Don’t make these mistakes with your promotional products. Instead, partner with a group like ThinkQuik that can help you throughout the entire swag process. From selection to delivery, we’re an extension of your marketing team.
We’ll take the job, you take the credit. Call us today to see how we can help.
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