Whether you’re planning a massive promotional event or exhibiting at a trade show, promotional products are a great way to maximize your goals. Unlike some of the more widely used marketing tools, promotional products can be customized and used in different ways. However, the versatility comes at a cost. This means that you need to carefully plan your campaign in order to avoid any blunders that can hamper the success of your promotions.
As a promotional products distributor, we often come across clients who make mistakes while placing their orders. This can potentially lead to problems in the execution of marketing strategies and yield unsatisfactory results.
To make sure that promotional products work for you the way you intended, avoid the following mistakes while placing an order:
1. Ordering Too Late
Most companies planning a large-scale campaign for their promotions would like to use unique promotional items to make a mark on their audience. But if you’ve placed an order for custom giveaways, then you’d know that it can take a while to manufacture them.
While you may want a fresh and original promotional product, if you’re too late in placing the order, you’ll have to settle for the products available in stock. So, make sure that you place an order at least 5 months before your event.
2. Not Developing a Promotional Products Strategy
While promo items are a highly effective form of marketing communication, you won’t get the desired results from them unless you’re clear about your promotional products strategy. Before selecting a type of products or its design, it is vital to identify your objective for giving them away.
Some examples of what your goals can be are:
- Increasing your website traffic
- Increasing brand awareness
- Getting mailing list sign-ups
- Promoting a product or service
Each of these objectives will need a different product, design, and distribution plan. Once you identify your goal, you can then choose the right product for your campaign.
3. Ignoring Your Target Audience’s Preferences
One of the biggest mistakes you can make while ordering a promotional product is selecting an item that your target audience won’t like. This happens when you consider your own taste, get stuck on the uniqueness of an item or focus too much on popular trends instead of the needs of your targeted demographic.
Moreover, it takes more than being related to your business for a giveaway to be well-received. So, ensure that you’ve done enough research on the interests and hobbies of your target audience, and pick a product that will actually appeal to them.
4. Choosing a Generic Design
You must have seen many businesses hand out promotional products and trade show giveaways with nothing more than their logos on them. While you can still make a good impression with an impressive promotional item, the product should bear a resemblance to your brand in terms of design, color scheme, and message.
What’s more, a generic design can be considered uninteresting by the recipients and you may not get the response you expected. So, use an attention-grabbing pattern or a catchy slogan to make the product memorable and provoke a positive reaction from your audience.
5. Ordering the Wrong Size
Believe it or not, when it comes to apparel, ordering the wrong size is a big mistake that companies often make. Whether it comes to t-shirts or any other product line, there is no one size fits all. Promotional apparel that can’t be worn is a complete loss for your business as it isn’t going to promote anything at all. This makes it extremely important to order a variety of sizes. That’s why we, at Promo Direct, offer the full range of sizes from XS to 4XL.
If you’re ordering promotional apparel for your employees, then send them the size chart and ask them to select their sizes based on it. This will ensure that the t-shirts or polos you order will have the right fit. Another thing to keep in mind is the type of fit the apparel you’ve selected comes in – slim or regular.
To avoid sizing problems, you can also:
- Ask for apparel where sizing won’t be a problem
- Ask for alternative products
- Ask for samples to review the fit beforehand
So, the next time you order promotional products or trade show giveaways, don’t make these five mistakes. If you’re looking for promotional products for your next trade show or promotional event, then feel free to check out our extensive collection here.