How to Build a Promotional Products Business: These are questions that everyone in the promotional products industry has pondered.
And the best person to answer them is someone with a deep understanding of the industry and its customers.
We sat down with BusinessHAB’s expert courses, a business owner with many years of promotional products experience. He shared some invaluable ..
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How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
Promotion is the final of the “four Ps“ of marketing and focuses on reaching potential customers and convincing them to buy your product.
It involves directing advertising and outreach at your target market to inform the customer about your product and its features.
A successful promotional strategy, then, focuses on identifying those customers, finding the best way to reach them.
And then crafting focused promotional media to get your information across to them.
Use the following steps to craft your own promotional product strategy.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
1. Identify your target audience.
Your starting point for creating a promotional strategy should be to figure out exactly who you are marketing to.
Identify this audience by factors like age, income level, interests, gender, and other descriptors.
Your entire promotional plan should then be built around the wants, tastes, and sensibilities of this group.
Make sure to define this group in as much detail as you possibly can.
- For example, imagine you are selling a new type of backpack for international travel.
- Your target market might be middle-income millennials who enjoy budget traveling.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
2. Understand your ideal customer’s preferences.
Work to understand your target customer, including things like what they look for in a company.
Their ideals, and other factors that are important to them.
Part of this process should be studying other successful businesses that are targeting the same market through advertising.
What aspects of their products or company culture do they stress in their ads?
Stress the aspects of your own business or product that match these ideals.
- For example, your target market for the travel backpack might favor living a “free” life and seeking new experiences over luxury or material things. You can use this information to focus on how your product fits into this lifestyle.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
3. Match your target audience to the media channels they use.
Your next goal should be identify which media channels should be used to reach your target audience.
For many products, online advertising may be an effective way to reach customers.
However, this is not true for products targeted at older consumers, which might be advertised on the radio or TV.
Other common options include newspaper ads, direct mailing, and billboards.
Figuring out which is best requires assessing your target audience.
And may work best after a bit of trial and error.
Try increasing your spending in one media channel for a month and see if you see a rise in sales.
Use what you learn to adjust your advertising policy accordingly.
- For example, your travel backpack might be best advertised on websites, as your target demographic, millennials, spend much of their time online.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
4. Fit your promotional strategy into your overall marketing strategy.
In order to effective, your promotional strategy has to fit in with the other three Ps of marketing.
Which are price, product, and place.
Promotion typically comes after work has been completed on the product and price aspects of the 4 Ps.
This is because only with a defined product and price point can you identify a target market for your product.
Your promotion strategy is also tied to your price strategy.
However; you can’t spend money on promotion without incorporating that cost into the price of your product.
- Your promotional strategy with also influence and be influenced by the final P, which is place (or placement). Place incorporates how and where your product will be sold. Your promotional should direct customers towards this location, be it online, at a local store, or in your own store.
5. Determine what you want from your promotional strategy.
Your promotional strategy should have a well-defined goal.
This goal might be depend on the lifecycle stage your product is currently in or the actions of your competitors.
For example, a promotional strategy for a new product might seek to create awareness of the product.
Common promotional goals include:
- Making customers aware of the product.
- Driving them to buy a product they are already aware of.
- Explaining features or functionality of a product.
- Drawing previous customers back.
- Making your product stand out from your competitors’.
- Displaying the business’s “brand” (its ideals, charitable or community involvement, etc.).
- Your strategy can include several of these goals. For example, the travel backpack will likely have to be introduced (making customers aware of it), explained (what does it do?), and differentiated from competitors (what does it offer that others do not?).
6. Work to carve out a market niche.
Part of narrowing down what you want in your promotional strategy is figuring out exactly what gap your product or business will fill in the market. That is, what can you provide to consumers that doesn’t already exist? What need are you filling and in who’s life are you filling it? This could be a competitive advantage, such as providing a cheaper (but similar in quality) product than your competitors, or a unique quality of your product. Whatever your product’s niche is, work to place your product in it through your promotional work.
- Using the travel backpack example, your niche could be that your pack includes a “theft-proof” compartment for valuable items like passports, phones, and computers.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
7. Define your business’s brand.
Your business’s brand is the face that it presents to the market.
It is how your company is perceived.
For example, a company can be seen as family-friendly, ecologically-conscious, supportive of the community.
Or any number of other attributes, good or bad.
Define your brand clearly and use it to inform all of your marketing content and outreach to customers.
Each point of contact with customers should reflect your brand.
- For the backpack example, your brand might be that you are a company that supports the traveler’s lifestyle and appreciates different cultures around the world.
8. Call your potential customers to action.
Regardless of your promotional goal, you should always be telling your customer.
Or potential customer, to do something.
This can be direct, like “look out for the product at your grocery store,” ‘
Or indirect, like “by supporting [the business] you are supporting our veterans.”
To craft a call to action, think about what you want customers to do after they view or hear your ad.
For example, should they go online for more information or look out for your item at the store?
- To create effective calls to action, try keeping them short and focused. In addition, work to create a sense of urgency, focus on the product’s benefits, and use action verbs (download, visit, look for, etc.).
- For example, an advertisement for the travel backpack might include a call to action like, “visit our website at [website url] to see where our customers have taken our pack!”
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
9. Assess your promotional budget.
Before choosing promotional strategies.
You’ll have to consider how much money you can spend on it.
Work out a budget based on what you have right now.
And how much you expect will be coming in during the course of the marketing campaign.
This will inform the type and amount of advertisements you place.
Promotional expenses also include the provision of samples, trial products.
And wages for employees performing outreach events.
10. Think about the timing of your promotion.
The timing of a promotional campaign can impact how effective the campaign ultimately ends up being.
Think about whether the demand for your product is seasonal.
And try to hit customers right before or at the beginning of your biggest season.
If there are any holidays, dedicated months, or large events that are upcoming and related to your product.
Consider launching a promotional campaign to accompany it.
- For example, many people take longer vacations in the summer months.
- Your travel backpack should be promoted in the months or weeks leading up to the summer.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
11. Purchase targeted advertising.
Plan to purchase advertising space on the media channels you identified earlier.
Within these, place ads on networks, in magazines, or on websites that are directly relevant to your consumers.
This type of “targeted” marketing works to make sure that your advertisements are going primarily.
To viewers that might be interested in your product.
This saves you money and allows you to earn more business per dollar of your marketing budget.
- For example, a good place to place an ad for your travel backpack might be on popular travel blogs or websites.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
12. Consider low-cost media.
Many companies find that social media promotion.
And staying in contact with customers online is an effective way to boost sales.
This is especially true if companies earn followers.
Or likes on social media sites by posting interesting.
And relevant content in and around their product promotions.
However, there are other options for low-cost promotions.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
13. Try any of the following:
- Hosting a giveaway. Use a sweepstakes website to host a giveaway that includes your product and cash, a vacation, or some other valuable prize. Increase your exposure by giving out additional entries when an entrant shares the sweepstakes or posts about it on social media.
- Tease your product on social media. Create social media posts teasing the release of a new product by hyping it up and providing incomplete information. Build up followers by creating interest in the product before revealing it.
- Obtain cheap promotional images. Websites like Fiverr.com can give you access to talented graphic designers and their work at a low price. Get quality work on the cheap and then post it to social media to increase your product’s visibility.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
14. Consider giving out samples.
Free samples can help customers try a product they might otherwise not be willing to try.
If your product is a food or cosmetic, for example.
You could offer sample-sized portions to customers in stores.
If your product is more difficult to sample, you could instead send free samples to “influencers.”
These people and organizations are those who are trendsetters or respected figures to your target audience.
While they may not like your product, if they do end up liking it.
They can post a blog or social media description of your product and a link to your website.
This can be an effective way to sway customers towards buying your product.
- For example, sending a free sample of your travel backpack to a famous travel blogger may result in a mention of your product in a post about good travel bags or a trip that they took.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
15. Remember to incorporate public relations.
In addition to influencers, you will also want to get the help of the media to spread the word about your product.
Magazines, talk shows, and newspapers are examples of media where your product might be mentioned positively.
Contact these organizations to explain your product.
And see if you can interest them in mentioning it on their show or in their publication.
You can also sponsor related events in your community.
- For the backpack example, you could contact magazines that are related to traveling and explain your product. If it is interesting enough, this may result in an article describing your product.
How to Build a Promotional Products Business:
16. Focus your marketing efforts.
As you design a promotional strategy.
Remember that marketing can be as much about what you don‘t do as it is about what you do.
That is, don‘t try to attract everyone to your product.
You don’t need to hit the entire market, just your core audience.
If the product does well there, you can expand later.
But don’t overextend your marketing strategy now or it won‘t be nearly as effective.
- You will also be constrained by a budget.
- So deciding what is most critical to your promotional campaign is important.
- Start with the most focused, targeted techniques and then go from there.
Conclusion
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