Building your brand identity is a time consuming and potentially costly exercise, but totally necessary for the health and longevity of your business. The many methods of marketing have been well and truly tried and tested over time, some of which work better for one company than another, depending on all sorts of different parameters. All of these traditional methods have been proven to work to varying degrees of success, either individually or as a suite of ideas.

One increasingly popular and effective method of marketing and building brand awareness is through the use of promotional merchandise. This can either be a stand-alone approach, or as an additional and effective support of other strategies. The great power of promotional gifts as opposed to other methods of marketing is their everyday usefulness and longevity; the fact that they can be seen and used daily by your target market.

With promotional print, radio or TV marketing for example, the time you have the attention of your customer may be only seconds, and the exercise needs to be constantly and expensively repeated to try to build your brand and product recall. Even with face to face contact, which may be more impactful and perhaps deliver a longer period of ‘influence’ time, and no matter how good the salesperson is, human nature is to forget and move onto the next pressing thing. If you incorporate promotional gifts into your marketing mix, the situation completely changes.

Back up your media advertising with associated promotional items which reinforce the message and give you a physical point of contact with your customer. Furnish your sales team with well chosen promotional merchandise for them to leave with their client as a ‘thank you’ for their time and as a reminder of the products and messages discussed. Make sure your contact details are imprinted onto your branded merchandise along with pertinent visuals and marketing messages so your customer has no problems getting in touch when they need your services.

If you choose your promotional gifts carefully, making sure they will be useful and attractive to your target audience, they will retain and use them in the course of their business and daily lives. This means that your logo and tag lines will become very familiar to them and therefore build brand awareness for your company and products. The next logical event is that they will think of you first when they have a need for your products.

In terms of value for money invested, promotional items offer great cost effective way to promote your business and build brand awareness. For a one-off investment, you can get your logo and marketing messages in front of your target audience repeatedly over a period of days or months, perhaps longer. That consistent and prolonged exposure with branded gifts is what helps to build brand recognition in your marketplace. No other marketing method can achieve this level of exposure for the relatively small investment involved.