Have you ever considered how to cut down your marketing costs? Have you been thinking about not sending promotional gifts this year? What a mistake that could be! Do send them - just make sure that they make money for you, before you even buy them!
Most people when looking at promotional gifts think about promotional pens, diaries and the likes. These are fine and easy to distribute, but usually have only enough printing space for your message. With the current financial situation you need to be thinking beyond the obvious. How can you make your promotional gifts work for you, before you send them? How can you make sure that you recover the cost by the time you distribute them?
Most promotional items work along the lines of reminding your recipients of you so they are more likely to come back to you next year or more likely to refer you to their contacts. Fine, but how can you put a figure on this return when business everywhere is struggling? If it important to use the expensive promotional Parker Pen to see the success?
Quite simply, get paid to distribute your own promotional products. Not a huge amount, just enough to cover the production and distribution costs. Don’t be greedy and people will be pleased to work with you and effectively your promotional products are free.
The way to do this is to sell advertising space on your products. So here I’m not talking promotional items with small print areas, I’m talking larger, but still cheap, items with plenty of print space.
Clothing is fine to litter with plenty of other logos if you are giving the items out at an event and calendars can cost that little bit more, so personally mouse mats are my favourite here. Across the top of the mousemat put your logo and contact details then split the remainder of the mat into 2. Most of the remaining space is used to display a calendar or photos of your products.
Then the remainder of the space is available for a few adverts or a list of recommended other suppliers. This space is sufficient to hold several logos or a dozen or more website addresses. Depending which you choose, charge a small amount per advert space and fill it up with adverts. The more mats you are producing the better it is for the advertisers - the more your advert is being seen. You can even give them one when they are produced so they feel they have got something for their cash!
But, why would people want to advertise on your mousemats? Well, it works on different levels. First, you know the recipients and they are your customers. Therefore, they will see these adverts not as adverts, but as referrals. Also, because they are your customers, you know something about them.
This is the special knowledge that makes this idea work - you know what your average customer is interested in - so think about what other businesses might also want to target your customers. This is a good example, but there are more low cost Internet marketing strategies to implement.
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