Posts Tagged ‘promotional items’

Who Uses Promotional Notebooks?

Saturday, December 29th, 2012

No matter who your target audience may be, promotional notebooks will help you connect with them

promotional notebooks - this is a good one

Kids and adults love the colours!

Promotional notebooks are a hit with writers, football mums, business professionals and professors alike. The truth is anyone can find an excellent use for a promotional notebook in his or her life. These small notebooks make jotting down a few quick notes quick and easy. They can be carried in a back pocket or purse and they are low cost distributors of one’s brand.

Perhaps you are still wondering which types of people would actually use this promotional product in daily life. Here’s a list to help you see the incredible benefits of promotional notebooks.

Bloggers

Bloggers love writing at any time of the day. A trip to the shop might strike up inspiration for a blog post on new recipes. With a promotional notebook in one’s back pocket, bloggers can quickly jot down a note to remember a blog post idea for later. They may even be sitting at their desk and simply want to physically write down a few ideas for an outline of a blog post. Promotional notebooks are highly useful in this regard.

promotional notebooks - a popular choice

Promotional notebooks are a popular choice.

Getting printed notebooks with your company’s logo into the hands of a prominent blogger could take your company to soaring heights of success. Think about it… blogging isn’t just for fun anymore. It’s a major part of many of your customers’ businesses.

Business People

Business people are always on the lookout for million dollar ideas or ways to improve a business. You can help them in their journey to success by handing out promotional notebooks that feature your company’s information and logo.

Grandparents

Grandparents will take your promotional notebooks everywhere. Whether they are going on holiday or traveling to watch their grandchild’s football match, you can be sure a notebook filled with a “to do” list will be traveling with them.

Kids

Kids will love the promotional notebooks that your business distributes. Notebooks with fun neon and yellow covers are a hit with kids. You can also put fun symbols on notebooks, like smiley faces or animals. Kids will show off your promotional notebooks to parents, teachers and other kids and adults. A future supplier or client could learn about your company by seeing a child with one of your promotional notebooks.

Write your company’s way to success with promotional notebooks. These much needed gifts will keep kids, grandparents, business people and bloggers jotting down notes all day long. They will also be proudly displayed so other people can see your company’s logo.

For more information about our large range of promotional notebooks,

please contact us on 01642 782455 today.

Your Flooring Business Can Walk All Over The Competition With Promotional Gifts

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

Now that the worst of the building recession is over and more people are starting to upgrade their homes it is no time to ease the aggression of your marketing strategy.

If your flooring business is one that withstood the separation of the wheat and chaff during the tough times, now is the time to start thinking ahead and get ready for the ensueing rise in available work. Promotional products can give you the edge in name recognition and word of mouth advertising amongst your peers.

Promotional gifts are any kind of giveaway item that has your name printed on it. The most prevalent promotional item is the promotional pen, which is a very low-cost way to have your name displayed to many eyes.

A promotional pen is useful and will often change hands, exposing your name to many more people than just a standard business card will. Cap-top pens are the basic, low cost promotional pen and can do a fine job when handed out in huge quantities, but if you are a smaller company with limited marketing resources a nicer, stylish click-pen can be had for a slightly higher cost.

The nicer pen is more likely to be used rather than stuck in a drawer next to the other cheap promotional pens.

Other low-cost/high impact promotional items tend to be simple things that are also useful. There is always a temptation to hand out a unique (and useless) trinket that may garner a chuckle before it is tossed away.

These kind of promotional items rarely work and are a complete waste of time and money. Useful items, such as promotional key rings, notepads, promotional calendars, beverage mugs, promotional fridge magnets, stress toys, and promotional mouse mats can be in the price range of about a pound or less per unit.

Once you have decided what kind of product you want to use as promotional gift the next task is to choose a promotional product supplier. A worthy promotional product dealer will not necessarily be the cheapest, but the slightly higher price will translate to better service and product knowledge.

You may save 50 pounds on a promotional pen order with one dealer, and then discover that you ordered and paid for 1,000 pieces of garbage because they don’t bother to check whether or not the pens they sell work well as a writing utensil.

Do your research and find a promotional product company that is happy to send you samples. Then place your order and watch as your schedule fills up with work.

Promotional Gifts Drum Up More Business for your DJ Business

Thursday, February 17th, 2011


The love of music and your knack for picking out songs that keep large groups of people happy has evolved in to a DJ business. You may be happy working at this a few times a month, but something deep inside tells you it would be more fun to do it several times a week.

Scratching your head about it won’t get you many results. Simple business cards can get lost in the shuffle along with everyone else’s card, but when you hand out promotional products your service will stand out among the others much more.

Promotional gifts, when chosen wisely, can help take your DJ business to the places you have been wanting to go.

If you are on a budget there are many promotional items that can be purchased for a relatively low cost and still help you to gain more exposure- promotional pens are cheap enough to hand out by the dozens at each gig and can do wonders for brand awareness.

Keyrings emblazoned with your name and contact information can remind it’s recipient of your buttery beats each time they use their keys. Fridge magnets can be made in any shape and color you desire to best represent your style. Even simple sports bottles have a low per-unit cost and will be a welcome promotional gift during the warm summer months.

You may fancy yourself as a very tech-savvy individual, why not use that talent in your promotional product? Promotional USB flash sticks are useful and can contain a wealth of information about you and your services.

You may rely on event-planning services as leads to your gigs. Don’t just hand them a business card like everyone else does- a promotional USB flash drive can be printed with your contact information on the outside and be manufactured pre-loaded with the media files of your choice, such as music, video presentations and powerpoint presentations that include references and songlists.

Event planners are handed business cards all the time, a promotional USB flash stick is not very likely to be stuck in a rolodex and forgotten about.

These are just a small example of what kinds of promotional items are available to you for the purpose of raising the awareness and exposure of your service. There are hundreds of choices available. Promotional items and the selection can be overwhelming.

The best first step to make in choosing a promotional gift is to contact a reliable online gift supplier of promotional products. A quality purveyor of promotional gifts can help you to narrow down the selection and pick out a promotional giveaway item that is tailored to you and your service, both physically and aesthetically.

Better to make that call before your competition does.

Use Promotional Products To Increase Your Business Revenue

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011


Your business has been doing okay, but you may have found yourself with a little more free time than you would like lately. Promotional products are a very simple marketing tool that can help with your exposure and word of mouth.

Promotional gifts need not be expensive, and you may be surprised at how a little money spent on promotional items can go a long way in regards to market awareness and customer retention. In this article we will discuss a few promotional gifts that can take your business to the next level of being busy.

Promotional pens have proven to be one of the most effective promotional items available. Promotional pens can be had for just a few pence per unit for standard cap-top pens. The cap-top promotional pen is a fine promotional product, however, it may make sense to invest a few pence more in order to hand out a promotional pen that is a bit more unique compared to other promotional pens that your clients are handed on a regular basis.

Insist on samples from your promotional gift supplier so that you can see for yourself the differences and test out the quality of each item. Once you decide which promotional pen to utilise your promotional product company will be able to offer ideas about printing your company information directly on the promotional pen in the most effective fashion.

Fridge magnets are another low cost promotional item that can have fantastic results, displaying your name each time the fridge door is opened. Simple keyrings emblazoned with your information can help to remind of your services every time a door is unlocked or a car is started.

Promotional notepads will display your name to anyone who jots down a note or list. With summer approaching, sports bottles bearing your company info are a welcome promotional product that combines marketing with summer hydration.


If you don’t mind spending a little more per unit there are promotional items that can really set you apart from the rest. Promotional calculators that display your name are sure to be used. Promotional mousemats can be imprinted with your company information and are always a welcome gift to those constantly on a computer. Custom USB flashdrives can have your information printed on the outside and a complete company presentation preloaded on the inside.

Whatever promotional product you choose, if it is done right your company will benefit from the increased exposure. Get started by requesting samples and asking for a quotation for the products that interest you.

Why are Some Promotional Gift Suppliers So Much More Expensive Than Others?

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

The promotional gift industry is just like so many others. Order from the larger suppliers and chances are you will pay too much!

I can remember when I first started supplying promotional merchandise. There were the small companies who had to fight for every order and the larger suppliers who simply blanket mailed hundreds of thousands of brochures to businesses everywhere.

Back in those days, the larger businesses had it easy because they had the means to promote to the masses. Now, however, their numbers are dwindling because we are all able to promote our products to the masses.

Some of the larger suppliers are finding it hard to compete because of the way their businesses are structured. They were taken off guard by the new and free internet based marketing methods – choosing instead to carry on as before with out of date show rooms and expensive printed catalogues.

What does this mean to you as a purchaser of promotional merchandise?

I do not wish to speak badly about any competitor but if their promotional methods are out of date and you use them – you will most likely end up paying too much.

Think of it this way. Senator Pens is one of the most popular promotional pen manufacturers world wide. Senator only sell their pens through distributors – promotional gifts suppliers. They are also quite fair with their pricing extending the same trade prices to their distributors regardless of their size. This is standard practice.

If company A is switched on and able to promote these pens inexpensively or even free of charge through quality websites, social media and social networks, they will not need to mark them up very much to make a nice profit.

If company B, on the other hand, uses more traditional methods such as expensive printed catalogues, sales reps and costly flash offices, they will no doubt need to mark the pens up more.

How your supplier chooses to promote themselves is not your problem. What could be your problem, however, is if you end up paying way over the odds for the same pens just because your supplier hasn’t progressed with the times.

It is therefore very important to look around and compare prices before proceeding with a large order.

I have seen prices for the same exact promotional products vary up to 50%! We aren’t just talking about small savings here. The difference in price can be substantial.

Do You Make These Promotional Merchandise Mistakes At Trade Shows?

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

Promotional merchandise is an integral part of trade shows. It can be used as an icebreaker to introduce prospects to your products and services, and also promotes your brand when people use the products later. But are you sure you are getting the most out of the items you use? Be sure you are not making these common promotional merchandise mistakes.

1. Displaying Promotional Items Unattractively

Are you displaying promotional gifts to your best advantage, or just throwing them on the table? People “scan” the stands as they walk through, and will stop at a display that is engaging, and creative. Grouping things like pens and stress balls by colour, or arranging them in interesting containers makes your stand look more professional, and draws traffic to you.

2. Not Customizing Your Promotional Items To The Clientele

To get the most out of promotional gifts, you’ll need to provide quality products that people will use daily. It’s true that everyone uses pens and notepads. But people also love to take away more specialized, functional items.

If your business caters to professionals, provide products that they will keep on their desks like calculators, rulers and sticky notes. If you are targeting tradesmen, technicians or outdoor workers, offer gifts that will be used in a shop or workroom like tape measures, box cutters, insulated mugs and hats.

Remember that your name is on the product. Items that are used and looked at daily will give you the best return on your investment.

3. Not Using Items That Promote Your Stand

Are you using products that can promote traffic? Pens and small items can’t be seen on the trade show floor. Bags, hats and promotional t-shirts will expose your logo to a room full of people as people carry and wear them. If you don’t offer these products, you are letting an opportunity get away.

4. Not Using The Items Yourself

Wearing your on promotional clothing says you believe in your brand. Unless you are required to wear professional or specialized attire, wear a logo-printed polo shirt or hat. Your logo should also be on your lanyard or messenger bag. Why use generic items when you have the opportunity to promote your brand?

5. Not Testing Your Promotional Items

Before setting the items on the table for prospects to pick up, be sure to give them a trial run. You don’t want to give pens that don’t write or items that break easily. Don’t wait until the products are in front of prospects to find out they don’t work.

By Dan Toombs

Promotional Gifts – 2 Frequently Asked Questions About Printing Gifts for Promoting Your Business.

Friday, January 14th, 2011

Having been in the promotional gifts industry for over 20 years, I get asked the same questions very often. Anyone who does not purchase promotional merchandise regularly could wonder why they get charged for this or that service. Often it could look a bit dodgy but it really isn’t. In this article I will answer the two most popular questions.

What is the origination charge?

When you purchase promotional gifts you will often be charged origination or set up charges. With screen printed or pad printed products, you may be charged a set fee per colour. With digital printed, engraved and embroidered products it is often necessary to charge a one off set up charge per position.

In the case of pad and screen printing, this is the charge for setting up the screens so that we can print whatever it is you want to have printed. A different screen needs to be made for each individual colour and position. The process is quite time consuming.

It also involves the use of expensive equipment.

With embroidery you will need to be charged for the jacquard. The charge is based on the number of stitches required to embroider your logo.

Similar processes and time consuming work is required for engraving and other printing techniques.

Often you will see promotional gift suppliers claiming not to charge origination. The truth of the matter is, however, that this work is necessary and needs to be paid for in some way. If a supplier does not charge origination they will usually make it up in their costs per item or by charging too much for shipping.

It is therefore a good idea when asking for quotations to ask for the total price.

Don’t be scared off by origination charges. Origination is a necessary part of personalising most promotional products.

What is pad printing and how does it differ from screen printing?

Often it is necessary to pad print products rather than screen printing them. Screen printing is the faster of the two processes.

There is no difference in the quality of a screen print or a pad print. Pad printing is used when the product being printed has difficult curves such as a rounded pen clip or a squishy stress ball.

Without getting too technical, it makes it possible to print onto surfaces that simply cannot be screen printed.

As the process is slower, it is often slightly more expensive than screen printing.

Warning * Cheap Promotional Gifts Can Damage Your Brand

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

Promotional photo mugs

Promotional gifts like these popular logo printed mugs are make ideal good quality gifts.

We’ve all received them. Cheap promotional gifts come in many shapes and forms. Stay at a hotel or motel and you’ll probably leave with a cheap promotional pen with the hotel’s name emblazoned on the side. The pen will probably write for a few days and then dry up. So, you toss it in the bin and the promotion is over.

Promotional products that are of a higher quality tend to be kept longer by the recipient. The longer someone keeps a promotional item, the more exposure for the company that distributed the item. It therefore pays to invest a little more in your promotional products.

You will get a better response from those who receive the promotional gift. A better response means a better chance for increased contact and ultimately, more sales.

Giving promotional items often comes down to your budget. If you’re able to allocate £500 to a promotional gift campaign and you want to distribute 10,000 promotional gifts, you won’t get a quality item. At a cost of just 5 pence per unit, you will inevitable get something very cheap like a sticker or an eraser-less short pencil typically given out to keep score at a golf course.

To improve your chances of attracting future clients, raising money for charity or some way building your business, it is smart to give out better business gifts.

In the above example, the same £500 budget could be used to distribute 1,000 promotional products at 50 pence each. While you won’t reach as many people, you’ll have a much greater percentage of people who will hold on to their gift for a longer time.

Promotional items are often given to employees to recognise good work, loyalty and special achievement within the company. Giving something nice like an insulated, stainless steel travel mug or perhaps a crystal engraved decanter, will be well received. A cheap pencil while useful, may say to the employee you don’t think too much of them.

Charities often use promo products to draw attention to their cause. Give something substantial with each donation and you’ll attract more donations.

Another reason companies give out promotional gifts is to promote a new product introduction. A good quality item will encourage repeat business.

You can usually get good quality promotional gifts at a better price by shopping online. With less overhead than traditional promotional gift suppliers, cost savings are passed on to you the customer.

By Dan Toombs

10 Sure-fire Promotional Gifts That Work

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Promotional gifts are useful and charming items that display the name and contact information of a company or organization. These gifts can work for a business or organization on a number of levels.

First of all, they simply and effectively advertise a business. They can be given to existing customers along with the purchase of various products or with various sales or promotions.

Often, being useful items, these promotional gifts then stay with the customer for an extended period. Each time the customer uses the product, he or she sees the name or logo. In addition friends and family of the customer may use the item and thus become familiar with your business name as well. All of this serves quite effectively to attract new customers.

Another way promotional gifts work to benefit a business or nonprofit is to make their employees happy. Incentive gifts can be given to employees when they are hired or as they progress up the ranks of the company.

This gives employees a sense of belonging to the company or organization: they make them feel appreciated. Happy employees increase productivity and general organizational well being.

Organizations and charities have other goals. Not profit but rather public attention and donations.

The more people who become concerned with their cause and informed about their work, the more quickly that cause may be realized. Promotional items serve this purpose quite well. Circulating useful items among people and getting the organization’s name and cause seen attracts interest and donations.

Following are 10 promotional gift ideas that could get you started;

Promotional Pens

One of the most common and popular promotional items, pens get you noticed. Almost everyone uses pens on an ongoing basis and uses them often. So brand promotion and recognition organization happens quickly with pens.

Logo Printed Toys

Toys of all sorts are wonderful promotional items. They communicate a sense of family values on the part of an organization and have a friendly feel to them.

Promotional Mugs

Coffee mugs are another time honored and excellent promotional item. Again, they are used on a daily basis and are appreciated and familiar to many people.

Clocks and Watches

Clocks and watches are not only common items looked at several times a day, but also have a sense of value. Even if they are not expensive, they may appear to be so.

Promotional Tools

Tools such as flashlights or screwdrivers may not be used as often as other items, but they make up for this by communicating an especially high sense of usefulness.

Promotional Sweets

Candy cheers people up. Though it doesn’t have the long lasting quality of some other promotional items, it is such a fun type of gift that even in a short time it can have a lot of promotional clout.

Cameras

Cameras are a high value promotional gift item that makes people see a company as generous. They may be somewhat more expensive than some other promotional items but the cost is usually not prohibitive.

Calendars and Planners

Calendars and planners are cheap, have long term visibility, and are widely seen and used year round.

Promotional Bags

These include handbags, shopping bags, suitcases, briefcases, and the like. Here you have not only a useful gift but one that is associated with certain activities, namely traveling and shopping. People involved in these activities are generally in an active mindset and that can have obvious advantages.

Other people see them as they go from place to place similar to a walking billboard.

Hats

Hats are fun to wear and to show to others. They are a great promotional item because someone wearing a hat essentially shows the company or organization name or logo to everyone they meet throughout the day.

In selecting promotional gifts, a business or organization needs to think in terms of good quality for the lowest price. Good quality items last the longest and communicate integrity and value. Usually the best place to buy promotional items is from online suppliers with low overhead.

In the internet age, there are a wide range of suppliers to choose from. Look for the right quality to price balance from an online supplier and your promotional efforts will be best rewarded.

Boost Your Sales With Good Quality Promotional Gifts

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Promotional gifts

Just some of the many promotional gifts available at CompuGift!

One of the most effective ways to market your business is by providing promotional gifts to prospects as well as existing customers. A physical object is constant advertising for your business. When a logoed item is placed on a desk or countertop, it can provide thousands of visual impressions per day. Choosing the right promotional product can ensure that it will be used and displayed, keeping your business name in front of people for months or even years.

Of course, the promotional items should send the message that you care about your prospects. Using this method of marketing accomplishes little in the way of advertising if the items are poor quality. Does this mean that you have to spend a fortune on top-of-the-line items that will be given away as “freebies”? Not at all!

It only means that you should value your customers enough to provide them with functional and high quality promotional gifts. The purpose of thanking your customers is to acknowledge that they are valuable to you. Nothing says “I don’t really care that much” like merchandise that breaks, falls apart, looks shoddy or doesn’t work.

Effective business gifts should be appropriate, useful and functional. Think about all the items you have received from trade shows or from your vendors. Which ones do you use daily and which ones have you thrown away? Chances are the ones you have kept on your desk are the gifts that are unique, usable and still working.

People don’t want stuff that doesn’t work, and you should not use it in your marketing efforts simply because you feel you need to give something away. The business gifts that you give to your clients and customers should reflect the value that you place on your relationship, their past patronage, or your hope for future business.

If you are using promotional products as part of your online marketing efforts, it’s especially important to provide quality items. When you mail items to prospects whom you have never met in person, for example, online contest winners, fellow bloggers, guest posters or other online service providers, the item will be the only physical representation of your company. You will not be there in person to demonstrate your sincerity or gratitude, so your product will need to do the speaking for you. Therefore, it should be a useful, quality item that people will be happy to have and eager to use.

Promotional gifts that work well and are long lasting will provide the best return on your investment. For the money that you spend on promotional items, you need people to keep and use them. This keeps your logo, business name and contact information in front of as many people as possible. High quality promotional gifts will help you grow your business when your customers use them all day.

Promotional pens are the ideal item to help you make this first impression. They are lightweight and easy to mail. Most importantly, a well-chosen pen can speak volumes about you and your company. Considering how many low-end pens are distributed each year and how many end up in the trash, a high quality promotional pen is a welcome gift and one that will be appreciated, used and probably even talked about for a long time.

Pens that write smoothly and that are comfortable to hold are wonderful business gifts that make the recipient feel valued. Refillable pens are even better. Not only will the recipient use them for years, but your logo will continue to advertise for you. A pen with space large enough for your company’s imaging is essential to keeping your name visible and in the customer’s mind. A long-lasting promotional item more than pays for itself over the long haul.

By Dan Toombs

Compugift on Facebook.find us on facebook
Compugift on Twitter.follow us on twitter
Compugift RSS Feed.subscribe to our news feed