A recent market research study concluded something that most people in marketing already know. Combining promotional items with advertising in any media increases the positive effect of the marketing message. In fact, promotional items combined with ANY advertising proved more effective in delivering a positive message than the combined power of print, television and radio advertising. When you combine your marketing message with cleverly chosen promotional gifts or giveaways, you increase the effective power of your marketing budget enormously.
Of course, you can’t just choose a giveaway willy-nilly. The promotional products that you choose should support your marketing message. It should tie into both your company and your promotional campaign. It must be something that the recipients will find useful and attractive. And you get high marks if it can be used to increase your product or brand’s visibility. Business gifts come and go, but among the items that fit the bill – and give you a wonderful hook on which to hang a marketing slogan – are promotional umbrellas.
One of the things to look for in choosing promotional items for your business is a way to use the item in a clever turn of phrase for a slogan or saying. Being able to play on words with your gift makes the gift and your company more memorable. Thus, a bank might use promotional umbrellas in a marketing campaign with the theme “Savings for a Rainy Day”, while a travel agent might use the slogan, “A Holiday from the Rain”.
Promotional umbrellas aren’t the only type of giveaway that tie nicely into marketing slogans, but they offer an easy way to illustrate the principles of tying your marketing item into the theme of your current marketing campaign. Here are some tips for generating your own slogans and choosing the right promotional item to carry it off.
1. What is the message you want to get across with your marketing campaign?
Your marketing message should tell your potential customers how they will benefit from using your product or service. In order to decide on the message for your marketing campaign, you need to know what benefits your target market will find appealing. An insurance company, for example, offers protection from the things in life that can cost you money. Thus, their marketing message might concentrate on “we protect you”.
2. What items personify the message you want to deliver?
Once you’ve decided on a theme, make a list of items that come to mind when you think of that theme. In the case of “protection”, there are only a few items that spring to mind immediately, and high among them are printed umbrellas. A quick check of the various promotional items businesses online shows that promotional printed umbrellas come in a wide range of prices and styles that could be adapted to fit the company’s marketing budget.
3. What slogans or messages can you come up with that would tie the marketing item and your company together?
Now it’s time to stretch your creative muscles. If you’ve done a good job with the first two steps, you’ll already have a number of word associations in mind. In the case of our example, the insurance company that wants to use promotional umbrellas as a symbol of their protection, there are several possible tie-ins. One that stands out above the rest is “We’ve got you covered”, which plays on both the fact that insurance companies offer cover for your various needs, and the actual function of an umbrella, which is to cover you for protection. Another possibility might be “Protection from Life’s Little Storms”, which again plays on the function of the umbrella and the function of the insurance company.
Next time you’re looking for a way to tie in a promotional product to a current marketing campaign, think back to promotional umbrellas for ideas on how to use slogans to tie everything up in a neat package and check out the leading promotional gift companies online today for more information.
Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet.com, the UK's leading online promotional umbrellas and printed umbrellas supplier based in the north of England. Ideasbynet was established in 2001 and has taken the UK promotional gift market by storm.
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