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Promotional merchandise is a great way to reach out and engage with your employees, customers, and prospective clients. Personalised promotional items seem to be the perfect solution to grab people’s attention, while also developing attraction with our brand. But a key characteristic of using branded merchandise is a lot more than just to drive attention and recognition – it also helps to communicate other things about your brand.
Here’s what promotional merch says about your brand.
Brand Value
Established brand values communicate what a company believes in. It can articulate a brand’s purpose on a deeper level, reflects the brand aesthetic, and reach the ideal customer. While it sounds simple, it actually takes a lot of time, effort, and practice to do so. Every decision matters: the materials, color, design choices, typography of the promotional items, all of the above will communicate your brand value. People frequently associate the quality of your branded merchandise with the quality of your products and services. If your business is selling luxury cars, for example, you should choose quality promotional products to resonate with your value.
Brand Personality
The first step in successfully branding your company is establishing a clear picture of who you are as a brand – i.e. brand personality. An effective branding strategy must be able to clearly define your position within your industry, who your target audience is, and what your unique values are. Promotional products get the job done by creating the imagery of your brand through the color palette, messaging, fonts, illustration style, and other design elements. All of these elements work together to personify your brand, creating a personality that your prospective and current customers can relate to. No matter which personalised merchandise you choose, the end goal is to make your brand tangible so that customers can have a little piece of your brand.
Core Beliefs and Ethical Decisions
Your selection of custom merchandise is likely to be associated with your brand’s beliefs and ethics. For instance, if your company is a cosmetic company promoting anti-animal-cruelty, stay away from authentic leather goods as your promotional products since it will contradict your ethics. Similarly, if sustainability is one of your company’s core beliefs, you can opt for biodegradable and eco-friendly promotional products, and perhaps you want to avoid plastic-made items when an alternative is available. Promotional notepads, tote bags, reusable straws, custom promotional mugs, and water bottles are all great ideas when it comes to eco-friendly products – they are likely to be kept and regularly used, thus creating consistent exposures of good impressions about your brand that extends far beyond the intended.
How You Connect with Customers
Last but not least, branded merchandise shows how your company engages and connects with its customers. When the recipient of your promotional items continues to use merchandise with your logo in it, they start to unconsciously develop an emotional connection with your company. One study says that one-third of the customers will start buying from a company that they have never heard of before if the company gives away merchandise as a gift. This is explained in the marketing principle of reciprocity – your target audience will perceive the freebies as a gift and kind gesture from you. Naturally, they are more likely to buy your product at some point to return the act of kindness. The key is using your corporate branded items to develop stronger, deeper, and longer-lasting interpersonal relationships with customers.
Wrapping Up
Promotional products are proven marketing tactics that deliver the desired results. One of the best things about them is that they can be personalised to fit your budget, brand personality, and desired image, thus making them fantastic for increasing your exposure without stretching the marketing budget. Promote It is New Zealand’s leading promotional merchandise suppliers, offering an entire range of great unique promotional products and corporate gifts NZ that can be customised to suit your target audience and market. If you need help in developing or integrating a promotional products plan into your marketing strategy, be sure to contact us today.
