One of the great benefits of using promotional products is that they often achieve multiple objectives at once. Primarily they are often thought of as a brand awareness item, however they can also be extremely successful for Incentives to Buy programs (also called Gift for Purchase or Sales Baits).
If the item is attractive enough to your target market and the offer is reasonable you can experience the pull through sale effect while achieving a long term marketing effort. What more, the recipient of the offer instantly becomes an ambassador of your offer.
Union Tribune San Diego (UTS) used a promotional hoodie to garner more subscriptions, what I love about the program was the execution.
1) Delivery location as Petco Park – home of the San Diego Padres (this ties into points, 2 and 4)
2) The hook – A Padres Hoodie with Padres branding on the front, and a small UTS logo on the yoke (they thought about what the consumer would like to wear)
3) The offer was commiserate with the retail value of the hoodie, ie it was a reasonable purchase that the consumer saw value in – the hoodie was of good quality
4) Associating with a popular brand for the locale – home game for the Padres – obviously these are fans of the Padres – they aligned their brand with the Padres – Joint Ventures are great for leveraging the trust your venture partner has built up.
See also a previous blog on Local Area Marketing
Matthew Bywater
Marketing Strategist
For more marketing insight from Matthew check out his blog –www.matthewbywater.com
