Australian marketers spend more than $1.34billion on promotional products each year …. despite the growth in digital marketing spend.
“69% of advertisers said promotional products increased brand interest and 84% it created more favourable impressions of the brand itself.” Australasian Promotional Products Association.
Why promotional products still work for the marketer?
A way to position your brand, more serious, more fun, adventurous, innovation, etc.
It helps to grow your brands perceived value, through association, partners, etc.
If delivered correctly, you have a captive audience.
It can be an inexpensive way of engaging and connecting
It demonstrates brand creativity and effort.
You go beyond tapping into one of the senses and therefore have a greater opportunity of engaging and creating memory.
A lot of promotional products a kept and used by the receiver for years – creating engagement and personal memories with your brand.
The creativity used to get a response is the key to increasing profits and promoting your brand.
Why promotional products work for the customer
It’s physical. It tactical. People like to hold onto something. Evidence of this is all around us – people with their phones!
They provide customers with an added benefit – not just you advertising your brand.
If the synergy between customer, brand and promotional product is right, the customer will enjoy the association.
Customers feel special when they receive a gift. The acknowledgement of being a valued customer feels good.
Their impression of a company is more positive after receiving a promotional product.
They are more likely to do business with a company after receiving a proposal product
You have your strategic plans, your 12 month plans, now put this to the side and focus on what you can make happen in the next 12 weeks. Sometimes we stay in the big picture and forget about the small things that can make a massive difference. They also keep the ship moving. We just want to make sure that’s it’s moving in the direction you want it to go.
Here are some questions to get you thinking about how you can make small changes in how you approach the year and create an edge that takes you beyond what you produced last year.
What do you want to achieve for the first quarter of the year? Two things. Customer growth, Value growth, brand awareness, internal morale, database growth, etc.
Now take it a little wider and look at the remaining quarters, what are the 1 or 2 things you can achieve in quarters 3 & 4 that will make for an impactful 2018?
How can you build on the customer experience through-out the year? You might break it down into, as an example: Quarter 1 – Education, Quarter 2 – Inspiration, Quarter 3 – Participation, Quarter 4 – Reflection
How can you increase your knowledge of your customer? What do you know about them, what don’t you know about them? How can you find the answers? By asking, social media, research, etc.
Is there an opportunity to improve your communication to your customer? Is your customer interested in what you are saying? Do they look out for it? Does it add value?
What can you do around your brand to keep it fresh, contemporary and relevant? A brand will continue to grow if you water it. So keep watering it. It might not need a lot of water, but it still needs water.
What systems in your business need to be refreshed? Systems could range from how you launch products to how you work with your agency partners. Shake them up, in a good way, to see how you can improve on last year and ignite a new level of momentum.
Every man and his dog is doing or has done notepads. A long standing promotional product, that continues to grow. Year on year the notepad holds a top 10 position in the most popular promotional products. People still love stationery; despite being constantly tied to our phones. The great thing about the notepad is that you can make it work for your brand and your customer. It comes down to the type of notepad, the accessories you team it up with (e.g. pen or pencil), and the design. How and where you position your logo. What message do you want to convey to the audience? Is it a message that inspires and motivations? A message that people want to Instagram?The target market is wide, so it’s just about finding the right style.
Australia Day falls on a Friday in 2018. Making for a long weekend … just how we like it!
If you are looking for ideas to celebrate with your staff, clients, business partners, please get in touch with us before Christmas so we can get your order underway, so you don’t miss out.
In 2018, Chinese New Year will be celebrated on Friday, February 16.
With a growing Chinese community in the past few years, Chinese New Year is becoming a more and more prevalent celebration of culture and tradition in Australia. Families gather and festivities are held in the Asian communities to welcome the new year in.
With the upcoming Year of the Dog, which signifies fortune, career, health, and love prospects, this is what we can expect to see as we have seen in the past few decades.
Lots of red.
Street festivals and markets are bustling with people and noise and displays of food, art and entertainment.
The exchange of well wishes and chattering can be heard above the beating of the drums and the cymbals clashing for the lion dances.
Occasional firecrackers exploding in the distance.
A trade of red pockets/envelopes (which also happens in both a physical and digital environment) and blessings occur between the elders and the young at home
A delicious feast is prepared and eaten before families visit the temples to pray for a prosperous future.
So why not join in the celebration by participating or gifting? To the Chinese, gifting is seen as a nice gesture and effort made that shows your level of involvement. And the key thing to know here is that the Chinese LOVE their red. Anything red will capture their eye and will be kept as a symbol of luck. At Turnkey this is one our favourite times of the year, so we are more than happy to help you with this.
Whether you work on a financial year or calendar year, the start of a new year brings a new vitality and refreshed mindset. It’s a good time to review both current and future performance in respect to activity, results and investment/spend.
Healthy marketing practices to bring in the new year:
Where did you enjoy your best results? How can you not just replicate, but do this better? The wheel doesn’t always need to be reinvented. A slight change on a good performer – whether it’s a product or campaign can be very effective.
Reach out to your finance team. Have a bit of healthy sparring session with them. They thinking differently to the marketing team and the collaboration of thinking can bring new ways of managing your marketing dollars.
If things are a little tight, and you didn’t achieve the results you were after, instead of cost cutting as being your first point of call, shift the thinking to what would we do if we doubled our expenditure expenditure budget. What this does is change your mindset to think a lot wider and deeper, beyond where you currently are. This helps prompt more strategic solutions that can deliver higher returns.
Think quality over quantity. What content is resonating, impacting, cutting through with your audience? Keep doing this. The content that is not having any impact, ask yourself if it’s worth continuing?
Evaluate the correlation between marketing projects and business goals. Are they aligned? Have conversations with other departments. Are you all aligned on the business direction. How can you work even better together in 2018?
Is there an opportunity to enrich your marketing activity – both in respect to content depth and results by collaborating with new partners? Who do you share a similar audience with? Can you mutually benefit from working together through adding value to them?
Spend some time with your current business partners. What are they doing in 2018 to improve their business. What do they think you should be doing in 2018 to improve your? An opportunity for reflection and authentic relationship building.
How, as a marketing team, can you bring an elevated energy level to 2018? More enthusiasm, leads to better ideas, working relationships and results.
Include the key actions from the list above to your weekly marketing meetings, so they don’t become a ‘conversation I remember once having’, but they lead to actionable outcomes that drive marketing and business improvement.
Who knew we could change the way we relax at a beach? The rectangle beach towel seems only made for one person use. And then here comes the Round Beach Towel. What’s so good about a beach towel being round? Why has it become a envied beach accessory?
More beach coverage – which is good when you find yourself at a packed beach.
One towel can suffice two people
Enough space to manage fish and chips, computer, bag, beach ball
Visibility – for your brand.
It’s the ideal promotional product of the season especially when the Australian Summer means that we have plenty of opportunity to soak up some rays in this heat. On top of that, it is highly Instagrammable when the design aesthetic is captivating and therefore more likely to be included in that beach photo where others can see and will want one for themselves.
A nice alignment with a brand that speaks summer time – fresh, summer, beach, family & friends, enjoyment, carefree.
A great all year round promotional product, hands down. And anyone and everyone loves a coffee mug.
Whilst there’s nothing wrong with a coffee mug with your logo proudly displayed, there are other creative ways you can decorate your mug, ensuring the user will love it.
Coffee mugs can come to life that your customers/clients/staff will love with a little bit of creativity. Things to consider:
Size and weight of the mug
Texture – shiny matte
Material – ceramic, porcelain, china
Number of colours to be printed
Design
Message
Brand presence
Print quality
Price
Delivery Date
How will you deliver it to the receiver?
Can you personalise it?
Quantity and lead-time, with larger quantities custom designs can be produced offshore
Decoration position, consider a lip imprint, decoration on the base or on the inside to reveal your message
Also think about the packaging. How will the gift be received? A bit part of opening anything is the anticipation. Also when working with breakables, plan for the rough handling, so you protect the product as much as possible.
With the increase in digital decoration, there are more options to print coffee mugs with full colour and personalisation … your staff will always be able to find their mug in the staff kitchen cupboard and who doesn’t love receiving a gift with their name on it!
Branding Appears Magically
A thermochromic coffee mug with a unique thermochromic coating, allowing the dishwasher safe wrap, around branding to appear ‘magically’ when hot liquid is added, and then disappear again as it cools. A bit of fun. And it is nicely presented in a black gift box.
Interestingly, the list doesn’t change much from year to year. The innovation comes through on the application…. adding a twist on an old idea works well!
If you go to any office with a cake you are instantly the most loved person in the room. Particularly around 10.30am or 3.30pm. When people typically are thinking about food. It’s not time for lunch yet, but they want a distraction of some sort, and they are feeling food could help on both a physical and emotional level. Unfortunately driving around delivering cakes is not something we can do every day.
A hamper could be the way to go. Yes, there are a lot of daggy hampers out there, but there is also plenty of beautiful gourmet Hampers to choose from. Recently we produced a box of Truffles for a client. And for Christmas, you cannot go past a beautifully wrapped Christmas Pudding.
Whichever way you go, just give some thought to your customers and your business – finding that sweet spot between giving them something they want and something that reflects the type of business you are.
