How to Tie Your Promotional Item into Your Marketing

Here at ThinkQuik, we’ve often said you want a promotional item that is tightly tied into all of your marketing. A random piece of swag at an event just doesn’t get the job done these days. People are looking for relationships with brands and they remember experiences.

If you look for ways to tie your promotional marketing item in with your other marketing it will be much more effective in making an impression and improving sales. Here are a few ways you can begin to think of the big picture and tie your promotional marketing into all of your marketing.

 

Create a Cohesive Marketing Strategy

To get the most promotional “bang for your buck” you want to ensure all of your marketing is working together. Like a machine with many cogs or a wagon wheel with spokes coming out of the center of it for support, everything must be interconnected and carrying its weight.

Think of a wagon wheel. All of the spokes are the same width and length and they all emanate from a central location. If one was shorter, wider, or came out from a different area or angle, the wheel would not be as efficient.

But ensuring that they all come from the same place, look the same, and are joined takes some work. It’s not something that happens organically.

Here are three steps you want to ensure you have the most efficient marketing components at your disposal.

 

Step 1: Understand Your Marketing Goal

In the center of your wagon wheel/marketing strategy is your marketing goal. What are you trying to do? Are your goals to:

• get more customers
• become a household name
• beat the competition or
• do a better job at recruiting higher quality employees

Some of our customers think we’re nuts when we start talking about different goals because they assume it’s always more sales. But sometimes there are steps you must take before you can sell an extraordinary number of widgets or services. Sometimes people need to learn about what you do first and your marketing should be aimed at solving that problem.

So, define your marketing goal, establish how it will be tracked/measured, and let’s move on.

 

Step Two: List Your Spokes

The next step is to define the pieces of your marketing strategy that you are implementing. Unless you are a very large company, you will probably need to choose between the different types of marketing you want to participate in. You likely won’t have time for every kind and every platform.

Because of this, make a list of the things you will be participating in so that you can keep your efforts consistent and cohesive. These things might include:

• Blogging
• Direct mail
• Social media (social sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter)
• Thought leadership (posting to Medium, LinkedIn, and/or Quora)
• Experiential marketing
• Promotional products/swag
• Cause marketing
• Word of mouth marketing
• SMS and chatbots
• Attending events, conferences, and community activities
• Sponsorships
• Guerilla marketing
• Content marketing

Once you’ve committed to the types of marketing that will best suit your goals, consider how you will perform them consistently and cohesively.

 

Step Three: Tying the Different Types of Marketing Together

Obviously, the implementation steps vary based on what it is you’re tying together but here are a few “recipes” to consider.

Blogging, Content Creation, and Social Media

If you’re creating content for your business, you probably realize that it takes a lot of time. You need to research what’s of interest to your audience and then you will create the content based on that.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to content creation and dissemination.

1. All blog content should be shared on social media.
2. You should create content in various mediums. For instance, if you create a video, you should also transcribe it and make a blog post out of it.
3. Your tone should be consistent throughout social media, the blog, and website content. For example, don’t spend all of your time talking about how you are a green company without selecting green swag. All marketing should be interlaced and cohesive.
4. Employ user-generated content to populate your website, social media posts, and add them in for a different point of view on your blog. Quote the person and add on to what they’re saying.

Adding Swag

There are many ways to incorporate swag and it should be much more involved than simply handing something to someone as they pass you. You could:

1. Blog about your swag that you’ll be giving away. Use your blog as a big reveal or simply tell the story behind why you chose it. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy post. Simply share what need it meets.
2. Share pictures of your giveaway on social media, or again, use the platform for a big reveal.
3. You can use social media to crowdsource your swag asking your audience what they’d prefer. When people are invested in something they tend to share it and talk about it.
4. If you’re doing some sort of experiential marketing, select swag that builds on that experience, not something that looks like it came straight out of your company’s storage from some previous conference or event.
5. Personalize your promotional marketing item. Marketers talk all the time about personalizing communications but you may also want to consider personalizing your swag. We don’t mean monogramming. Select swag for a given demographic or stage in the client buying cycle. This is particularly effective if you have a long buying process and it takes potential customers a while to make up their minds.

Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective types out there, so even if you are pressed for time in other areas of your marketing, you should consider how ramping up your efforts here can feed into others. For instance:

1. Invite people to leave reviews on your website or give them easy paths/URLs to common review sites.
2. Select swag that is “Insta worthy” and ask people to share their treasure on social media.
3. Provide a hashtag for sharing and finding those shares will be easier.
4. Offer photo ops at your place of business, at your events, with your swag, or in other spots. Create a frame on social media with your branding.
5. Select swag that speaks to your brand or helps you tell your story.
6. Interview people and post these things to your site or social media.
7. Run a contest that involves people voting on your site or social media.
8. Send out a postcard inviting people to review you. Give them something for their time but don’t tell them you’re doing it ahead of time.
9. Send thank you gifts for past purchases and invite recipients to follow you on social media.
10. Give a social media shout-out to your customers and tag them. Invite them to share it with their friends. They deserve it.

The most effective swag or promotional marketing pieces are always going to tie into your larger marketing strategy. Don’t look at them as a standalone item.

When you draw up your marketing budget you may have a line item for an object or service, but in the end, all the components add up as part of your total marketing budget. You want to do the same for your marketing strategy. Look at how individual components will move you toward your marketing goals and then step back and see how everything is part of a larger marketing plan that works well together.

Contact ThinkQuik today and we can help you find that common ground and see how your swag can easily plug into your marketing goals.