Thinking hard about the right promotional products for your next marketing campaign? Are you debating whether to get attractive or useful promotional products? Well, before you go ahead and make up your mind, consider this. Customers or prospects are most likely going to cling onto USEFUL items for a long time. Promotional items like imprinted bags, writing instruments and apparel are kept longer due to their higher rating of usefulness. So don’t just choose promotional items based on looks. Remember your target audience and choose items that would be useful to them. For example, if the event is a conference, imprinted satchel bags would be very useful to the conference attendees and if it’s for a tradeshow imprinted tote bags are always a winner to keep goodies in. Below is a snapshot of usefulness versus attractiveness of a few imprinted products as found in a study by the Advertising Specialty Institute:

Reason for Keeping Item Useful Attractiveness

Bags 91% 34%

Writing Intruments 91% 12%

Other Apparel 89% 39%

Glassware/Ceramics 86% 26%

If you want to keep your brand name in front of your customers and prospects longer, then you have to embrace the promo power. Promotional products have longer staying power than other types of advertising. Just look around your office and home. You’re most likely to find promotional mugs, printed t shirts, stubby holders, desktop accessories all with the name of the advertiser on those items. Are you likely to chuck ‘em out? I doubt so especially when promotional products come in so handy like those promotional mugs you so often drink out of. I still have Geelong Footy Club’s promotional mug from the 90s and I think I’ll still keep it to cheers to their next premiership win which is hopefully not another 44 years away! According to a new study by the Advertising Specialty Institute, most people keep promotional products an average of seven months. Seven months…that’s even longer than the Footy season!

If you’re not too popular with your customers, well then, you really need to read this and if you’re already Mr or Mrs Popular with your customers then keep this in mind. I’ve got news for you and it’ll make you your customer’s best friend. Give something good to your customers and you’ll get something good in return. Don’t just view your customers as walking dollar signs. Concentrate on meeting their needs and creating a favorable impression of your business. In a study by the Advertising Specialty Institute, 42% of business people have a more favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving a promotional item. That’s nearly half the number of recipients! The percentage is even higher for certain other promotional products. Here are the top 3 promotional products which received the most favorable impressions:
1. Imprinted Bags – 53%
2. Promotional Shirts – 49%
3. Promotional Caps – 45%
Add promotional products to your upcoming marketing campaigns and rest assured that your stock value held by your customers and potential customers will shoot up!

What can you expect when you spend money sending out promotional products to a client or prospect? Well, according to the Advertising Specialty Institute, you can be fairly sure that they are likely to come back as a customer. In fact, the Advertising Specialy Institute found that sixty-two percent of businesspeople did business with the advertiser on a promotional product after receiving the item. By sending your customers or prospects free promotional products, you’re expressing your appreciation towards them. This either makes a current relationship better or helps create a new one.

Be careful not to send cheap and nasty promotional products to your clients and prospects. This will just do the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve and will give your business a bad name such as “Those cheapskate buggers!”. Bear in mind that you shouldn’t always give the same item to all customers and prospects. Reward your loyal clients with something better. Choose an item that’s going to look classy for your loyal clients, for example, executive promotional pens engraved with your company name or logo. You beauty! For prospects, choose the best promotional pens within your price range, ie. a promotional pen which looks like it’s worth more than it actually is.

I for one love to keep switching channels when I’m watching tv or listening to the radio to avoid annoying ads. Don’t you just love your remote! Good for us but not so good for tv and radio advertising. With many people inclined to switch channels like I do, can a typical consumer actually remember the advertiser he saw a few nights ago? I doubt it, especially when you add a couple of cold VBs (good ole Victorian Bitter beers) to the mix. I bet you they’re more likely to recall the advertiser on promotional products like the stubby holder they have in their home or office. Not convinced? Ask the Advertising Specialty Institute which reported that a whopping eighty four percent of people who had received promotional products remember the advertiser. That number is even higher for certain promotional products. For example, 94% of those who received promotional clothing remembered the advertiser, 90% for recipients of imprinted bags followed by 89% for recipients promotional caps.

The world economy may look bleak but strong minded businesses and entrepreneurs will always find opportunities even amidst tough times like this. It’s not how much resources you have, it’s how resourceful you are. Promotional Products is your key weapon to beating the tough times and outshining your competitiors. Rev up your use of promotional products in your marketing mix as it’s one the most cost effective and fail safe strategy to ensure every dollar you spend is going to give you the right return on your investment. In a study released by the Advertising Specialty Institute, promotional products beat other types of media such as TV, print and radio, in terms of Cost Per Impression (CPI). In articles to come, we’ll share with you the the Advertising Specialty Institute’s findings and compelling reasons why you cannot not afford to dedicate a good size of your marketing budget to promotional products. Embrace the promo power now!

There are many methods of t shirt printing in the market today. However, the top two most popular t shirt printing methods have got to be screen printing and heat transfer printing or digital transfers. So which one do you go for, screen printing or digital transfers? Well, ultimately the t shirt printing methods used depends on what you wish to achieve from the printing job for example, the quality and the feel of the print.

Screen printing
To start the screen printing (also known as silk screening) process, your approved artwork is converted to film. Each film is used to make the screens. A screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric called mesh stretched over a frame of aluminum or wood. The screens are then coated with a photosensitive emulsion. The screens are left to dry and exposed to UV light. After being exposed, the screens are then washed out with a pressure washer. The inks are then transferred through the tiny dots in the stencil to achieve the desired print. We use high quality plastisol ink as it’s similar to rubber and is very durable. Each color in the design must be blocked, taped, setup, and squeegeed. For smaller runs, manual presses are used, for larger runs with more colors, rotary automatic presses are used. By drying the ink between each color layer, we are able to achieve bright, consistent and professional quality printing with years of durability.

As you can tell by now, this method has a high detailed setup process to ensure the best quality print. The costs of this method is mainly in the set-up process. The number of screens for any design is based on the number of colours of the design. So the more colours you have the higher the set-up costs. This method is ideal for large quantity customers looking for a professional and durable finish. It is the most convenient and economical way to mass produce t shirts.

Digital Transfer
Once your artwork is approved, your design is printed onto a special type of transfer material using a colour laser printer. The transfer material is then pressed onto the t-shirt under high temperature. If you want photo quality print, digital transfer is your answer. This method is ideal for small run customers with multicolour designs looking for a fast turnaround time. Though the materials we use are of premium quality from Italy and Japan, digital transfer prints are still less durable than screen printed designs which are directly printed onto the garments.