As a nonprofit you worry more about your bottom line. You know promotional items are important and you rely on them to keep you top-of-mind with donors. You want the items to be meaningful and something they want to keep around but spending too much money on them can make people question how you’re appropriating your funds. It’s a difficult balance.

Promotional Product Tip: Be Remembered

There’s a way to use a promotional item for effective marketing and increasing the knowledge behind your mission.

The key is integration.

Just as I tell our corporate customers to integrate their promotional item tightly into their marketing campaign and audience preferences, nonprofits can benefit from doing the same. For instance, if your nonprofit looks to help increase knowledge about keeping our estuaries clean and unpolluted, a regular round stress ball says nothing about that cause.

• It doesn’t remind anyone of you.
• It doesn’t speak specifically to your audience, other than they have hands and can squeeze things.
• It doesn’t help promote your mission.

On the other hand, if you are a blood donation services nonprofit, a stress ball in the shape of a blood droplet reminds people of you, and your mission of collecting blood, plus it serves a function for squeezing during donations.

The Red Cross launched an effective campaign using a very strong promotional item because it spoke to the need for their services. Often people have nothing when they come to the Red Cross for assistance. Their homes have been burned, or flooded, or destroyed. They’ve salvaged a few things and they’re carrying around their worldly possessions in a garbage bag or a pillow case. The thought of this is heartbreaking for most people.

The Red Cross used that strong visual in their Pillowcase Project. The Pillowcase Project is a collaboration with Disney aimed at preparing children and their families on planning for, and coping with, natural or personal disasters, such as fire. Instead of merely producing a workbook, the Red Cross created pillowcases for children. These pillowcases are designed to hold valuable survival items. They educate (through suggestions printed on the case), comfort (the cases can be personally decorated), and serve as a reminder that the Red Cross is there to help.

Effective marketing for a nonprofit involves integrating that item into your mission as much as it does your budget. ThinkQuik helps nonprofits attract a following.

Contact us today so we can assist in making your promotional product as effective as possible.