One of the pillars of business growth is a vibrant marketing strategy. Communicating with your current customers and potential customers allows the brand to generate new leads and make sales. While marketing can be done in infinite ways, there are a few popular initiatives that many companies employ to increase brand awareness and drive action. Email marketing, social media outreach, website SEO, direct mail campaigns, radio/television advertising, and billboards are just some examples of how brands communicate with audiences in 2023.

Another method that may not blow anyone away but is, nonetheless, still an effective way to grow a business is promotional product marketing. This strategy uses branded merchandise to grow the visibility of a company by giving away items with a name or logo imprinted on them. Whenever these items are used by the recipients, others may interact with the associated brand.

While promotional product marketing can be effective, it is not a perfect solution for your marketing efforts. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to this method. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of investing in promotional products to increase brand awareness and loyalty.

Pro: Low Cost

Promotional items are usually ordered in bulk. This means that you can have them printed and delivered to your business for a one-time purchase, but then you don’t have to spend any more money on the initiative. Once you have the items, you can choose to give them away however you want to increase your company’s reach. Other marketing tactics may require ongoing investment, but promotional products are simply purchased upfront. However, they can still lead to repeated exposure for your business, as recipients may use them over and over. Some big companies order large quantities of custom stickers for their marketing purposes, and you could do the same for a very low cost.

Con: Less Control Over Results

Since the nature of a promotional product campaign makes you reliant on the actions of others, you have less control over who interacts with your messaging. Tactics like emails, social media posts, and direct mail allow you to choose who sees your communications and how they interact with them. Promotional items depend on the actions of the recipients to be seen in public. You could give away a shirt that cost 15$ to print and buy, but if the recipient tosses that shirt into the back of the closet and never wears it, then that investment may not yield any results.

Pro: Generating Excitement for the Business

Promotional products are great for raising awareness and visibility for your business, but they can serve another purpose too. Getting people excited about your company can build loyalty, which leads to repeat customers and happy employees. You could give away tote bags with your logo to loyal customers, rewarding them for making purchases with your business. This gift could convince them to exclusively buy certain products from your company, or maybe talk about the brand to a friend or family member. This person has become a valuable brand ambassador, all because you chose to reward them with a high-quality promotional item.

Con: Can Be Ignored

The nature of using everyday items for promotional purposes is that they may not always be noticed. It is easy to notice a giant billboard or a social media ad that is on your feed, but a t-shirt worn by a passerby or a drawstring bag at the gym is less out of place, and therefore, less noteworthy. Unless the design or color of the item demands attention, it is possible that people will not look twice to see what the associated brand is. While you can mitigate this reality by investing in high-quality items or hiring a graphic designer to create a truly memorable image, you can never control the actions of others enough to guarantee that your company will gain impressions.

Pro: Community Presence

Many new businesses must focus on marketing early on to get the word out about their product or service. Relying on your immediate service area can be crucial in the early days, as the brand name is not well-known and unlikely to get attention from other locations. You can lean into the concept of developing a community presence by investing in and distributing promotional items to locals. Those who walk by your store every day or live just down the street from your base of operations are the most likely to be among your first customers, so building awareness in town is a critical first step to building a customer base.

Have a Strategy

A mistake that many businesses make with promotional product marketing is not developing a strategy. You cannot buy some random items, give them away with no thought to who, when, or where, and expect the business to start growing. You need to have a detailed strategy for the campaign to have a chance of success. What items would your target audience want? Where can you give them away for maximum exposure? When is the best time to give items away? Without a plan to guide the giveaways, the entire campaign could be a wasted investment, so take the time to come up with a thorough strategy.