Impactful and Memorable Promo Items
Promotional products such as stress balls, coffee mugs, and pens all have one thing in common; they are common. Not that there's anything wrong with that… But, if you want to stand out in a prospect's or client's mind, you want to give them something that they find interesting and valuable (and I don't mean financially valuable!).
Here's an example of a custom promotional product that didn't work out too well from my perspective. My local bank always sends me cheap (cheap being the key word here) promo items for being a loyal customer. One year I received a pen, in a gift box. Sounds ok, right? Well, unfortunately for me - and the bank, and the rest of its customers - the box was dirty and of poor quality, the ink did not flow well out of the pen, and the entire package reeked of mothballs.
This was the worst promotional product I have ever received. The box was lousy, the pen was ugly, I had to drag it back and forth across a piece of paper a hundred times to get the ink to flow, and it smelled up my office. Guess what I did with it? Guess what I thought of my bank? And how much they appreciated me and their other customers? In all seriousness, it did cheapen the image of my bank. But after sharing this with the purchaser of marketing promotional products at the bank - and explaining how we focus on our clients' ROI and long-term image - we now supply all the branded items for bank.