How to Promote Your Brand on a Budget

This is a guest post by Natasha Alatassi, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

Large-scale advertising campaigns are often introduced by big companies with a huge promotional budget. However, you don’t need to have a huge turnover to be able to afford to publicise your brand. Here are some promotional items you can invest in that could see your profits rise and rise…

You won’t have to break the bank in order to purchase promotional merchandise with your company’s name printed on it, and if you choose your products carefully and distribute them in a targeted way, you could generate great exposure for your brand or marketing campaign.

Here are some tips about which promotional gifts to buy for a cost-effective marketing strategy:

Tips #1: Using USB flashdrives

Distributing promotional memory sticks may at first not sound like the cheapest option when it comes to promotional merchandise. However, USBs offer a great return on investment. This is primarily because USB sticks are incredibly useful – and usefulness is one of the key factors in making promotional products a success. If your target audience is likely to use flashdrives on a regular basis, they will not only keep your USB for a long period of time, but they will also see your brand frequently – perhaps even every day!

According to the British Promotional Merchandise Association (BPMA), 45 per cent of people said they would like to be given a flashdrive more than any other product, with 21 per cent commenting they found their promotional USB stick more useful than any other promotional gift they had received.

Wholesale USB prices fluctuate on a daily basis in the Far East, but typically 50 flashdrives with 1GB of memory can be purchased from a UK distributor for less than £250. This creates a much lower entry point for advertising your brand or marketing campaign than other forms of advertising – such as TV or radio advertising.

Tips #2: Using Umbrellas

You might not think this is particularly similar to USB sticks in terms of a marketing strategy at all, but look closely – both products are often used on a daily basis by large proportions of the public and both are not just seen by recipients, but also by friends, colleagues and even passersby.

What’s more, umbrellas offer a great print area for your logo or artwork – perfect if you want your printed umbrellas to act as a “walking billboard” at outdoor events.

Because of the repeated exposure of your brand or logo, printed umbrellas create lots of marketing impressions during the course of their life. As a result, the BPMA calculates that the average cost per impression for promotional umbrellas is approximately £0.003 – which is even more cost effective than USBs (which have an average cost per impression of £0.005).

Tips #3: Using Pens

The best thing about using printed pens is that they are not only one of the most useful promotional products, but they are also among the cheapest. It’s possible to buy 100 pens for less than £150, printed with a one colour logo or marketing message.

The BPMA revealed 12 per cent of survey respondents kept a pen for longer than any other promotional product they had received. As 33 per cent of people stated they retained promotional merchandise for between one and two years, you can be confident that whoever is using your pen will be able to see your brand identity on a regular basis – and for an exceptionally long amount of time!

Stock images: Marketing, umbrella 1, USB flash drive 1, and Pens.

– Written by Natasha Alatassi –