3 Promotional Giveaways That Potential Customers Will Keep And Use

With everything that goes on in the days leading up to a conference ' preparing your staff, arranging meetings, researching prospects, and even brochure and banner printing ' it's not surprising that so many companies put little thought into their promotional gifts. Despite the frequent lack of attention, promotional giveaways are a great way to put your company in the forefront of a potential customer's mind, even after they've left the conference. A well thought-out promotional item can help familiarize a prospect with your name, brand, product, or service ' leading to sales and referrals down the road. However, selecting promotional products that your potential customers will actually keep and use can be difficult. At any conference, attendees are inundated with a plethora of free pens, notepads, mousepads, and t-shirts. These items are often quickly lost or thrown out before the prospect leaves the convention center. The promotional items that potential customers will actually keep and use are the ones that offer value and stand out from the crowd.

While common items like pens, mugs and t-shirts are popular promotional giveaways, they never stand out from the pack. Additionally, they're items that are frequently discarded due to their low perceived value. If we assume that your prospect is in an influential position, is frequently inundated with free giveaways, and also has a certain level of class and taste, what kind of promotional giveaways will grab their attention? Below are 3 promotional item ideas that your high value prospects will keep, use, and enjoy.

USB Flash Drives

USB flash drives are a great promotional giveaway because they're useful, and despite their relatively low cost, they have a high perceived value due to their association with high-end consumer electronics and sensitive data. No one ever throws out a USB flashdrive. In addition to branding the flash drive itself, you also can include promotional material on the drive. Be sure to make your promotional material compelling, useful and interesting, or your prospect will have no reason to watch it. Although USB flash drives are always a welcome gift, yours may not be the only company to discover their value as a long term branding tool. You can stand out from the crowd by ordering custom USB flash drives that come in a unique shape or color. The downside of USB flash drives as promotional items is that they're a little on the expensive side ' even more so if you're customizing them. But if you're dealing with high value prospects, USB flash drives are a great way to ensure that the next time the prospect is in the market for your company's services or products ' your brand will be the first one on their mind. One last tip with regards to using USB flash drives as giveaways is that you should select a model with respectable storage capacity. One gigabyte flash drives are still relatively affordable and offer lots of storage. While this may slightly increase the cost of the promotional item, a little extra storage space will ensure that your prospect will always keep your flash drive handy.

High Quality Travel Mugs

Mugs are a popular giveaway item because they can be used by virtually everyone. However, a cheap, ugly ceramic mug might not find its way onto a prospect's desk or kitchen cupboard. On the other hand, high quality insulated travel mugs may end up being used on a daily basis by your prospect. While high quality travel mugs are a great promotional item, the downside of giving away quality mugs is the high cost. Like with USB flashdrives, you may want to reserve them for your high value prospects.

Post It Notes With Leatherette Cover

Post-its can be a great promotional gift if you're looking for something useful to giveaway ' but you don't have the budget for higher end promotional items. Since they're used in offices everywhere, you can be sure that your prospect will keep your stack of branded post-its handy. Of course, post-its have a low perceived value. But by putting your branded post-it pads into small, inexpensive leatherette covers (which can also be branded), you can greatly raise the perceived value of your gift. Hopefully this brief list gives you some ideas to get your promotional campaign started. Remember, if you're looking for promotional giveaways that your prospect will continue to use over and over, it's important that you take the time to carefully select useful, high-quality items that stand out from the crowd.

What kind of promotional items do you giveaway at your small business? Leave your small biz diamonds in the comments section below.

This is a guest article from contributing writer John Szabo. John is usually writing about personal finance and marketing questions that might be interesting for the public. Now he writes for banner4sale.com , a company specializing in cheap vinyl banners printing.

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