Custom promo items can offer a business any number of benefits, not all of them immediately apparent. Unlike other approaches to marketing, items such as custom water bottles give prospects and customers a reason to keep the material around long, long after they receive it. A pamphlet or email is only of value for the moment it takes a customer to read it, perhaps a little longer if it features a coupon code or information that might be difficult to remember; it certainly won’t be helping your business a year from now.
Branding
The simplest benefits of promotional items such as tumblers, mugs, and water bottles lay of course in branding potential. If you give out useful items with your logo, your imagery, and your contact information, those items will reinforce your brand daily for as long as the owner makes use of them. It’s a quick, effective, efficient way to reinforce an existing brand image or reinvent yourself for your customers.
Long term word of mouth
Mugs and water bottles stay around for quite a while. That means that a year from now, two years from now, a client may be drinking his or her drink and have a friend, acquaintance, or business partner see their coffee mug and ask about your company. It’s not going to sell this third party on your brand, of course, but it creates an incentive to talk about you – something profitable to any company with satisfied customers.
Value
When you give something of value to your customers as a marketing item, it serves as an early indicator of the kind of value you can offer. While a mug or water bottle may not tie directly to your offerings in the way a free quote or an e-book full of relevant information might, it does give a tangible representation of quality your company might offer. Quite simply, people take you more seriously when they have something concrete from you in hand.
Better than a business card
It’s a simple truth that people don’t want to put in any more effort than they have to. That means that if a prospect needs services your company may offer, they aren’t going to want to go digging for a business card from a convention three years ago. They’ll instead open up the phone book or make a quick Google search –
unless that mug with your phone number, email address, and website is sitting right there on the desk.
Of course, no promo item can do the hard work of selling your products for you. But they give you a great starting point for years to come.