It's not JUST a Promo Product!

I often wonder if any of my customers understand what happens behind the scenes in the world of promo products. What may look like an easy process - 1) pick a product 2) pick your logo 3) receive the items is actually not always as simple as it seems. From the very beginning - the first challenge we may run into is stock at our factories. Depending on the popularity of the item, or the season, stock is always something to keep in mind. If the item is out of stock, we then have to source an alternative with another factory that offers a similar item, same price, same production time.

From there - artwork and production pose a number of possibilities for issues to arise. First - we always make sure the logo fits within the imprint area, and that colors can be matched per our customer's brand guidelines. If not - we have to make modifications to the artwork. From font size to line thickness, to registration marks filling in and letters printing clearly, all must be taken into consideration so the finished promo product is legible.

We then have to communicate with our factories daily to ensure our jobs flow through the production line as scheduled. Possible issues could be weather delays causing our factories to shut down or time constraints with rush orders and guaranteeing the jobs are printed, packed and labeled before UPS arrives that day to pickup the packages. And finally - making sure the carrier that then delivers the printed promo products as we requested, clearly understands our shipping instructions and provides us with correct tracking information.

With all of these issues that 'could' arise during a normal order - this is the reason so many of our customers have come to rely on Pinnacle Promotions when ordering their promo products - because have the best systems in place to ensure your order arrives on time, as expected, Guaranteed.

*By Guest Blogger Natasha Rawls

Promo Products to the Rescue!

Promo products such as sewing kits and first aid kits can come in handy in many mini-emergency situations that occur throughout our daily lives – inside and outside of the workplace. Imagine, for example, a top executive who has to give a big presentation at the office, when he discovers that his top suit button is falling off. With promo products like sewing kits, he can quickly repair that damage and be ready to present. Companies in any industry can incorporate these such items into their marketing campaigns and will surely come to many recipients rescue! Just imprint them with your company’s name and logo to ensure maximum marketing exposure.

Promo Products – Pump the Fans and Your Brand!

Sporting events bring countless opportunities for companies to market their business with promo products from the plastic stadium cups fans drink from, to the pennants and flags they wave in the air. Imagine the exposure you could gain for your brand if you gave out these items customized with a team name and mascot, in addition to your own company’s name and logo. You could give these promo products to game attendees as they enter the stadium, and I bet they will be walking out with them too – hanging on to their free gifts to bring back for the next team. In turn, granting your business continued visibility!

Promo Products – Building the Face of a Company

A benefit of using promo products in your marketing efforts is that they help to create a “face” for your business – not only is your business then connected to something tangible rather than just an idea, but with your logo imprinted on different promo products your brand becomes more recognizable. Thus, when customizing these items you need to make sure that your imprints are consistent. Use the same font for your company name, the same logo, and even the same colors. This will help your company have a more defined image and for consumers to have a better retention of your company’s “face” because of this consistent exposure.

Promo Products to Fit the Season

During the holidays you cannot walk into a grocery store without seeing traditional candies and cookies now for sale in shades of red and green or even into a Starbucks coffee store without seeing a change in the appearance of their traditional coffee cups and heat-resistant sleeves. By tailoring your promo products and their packaging to reflect the season, you can get a much higher response rate as they will reference what is going on in consumers’ lives. You could even make changes as simple as ordering your promo products in seasonal colors or packaging them with paper or ribbon that reflects the time of year.

Ease Holiday Stress With Humorous Promo Products

While the holidays are often filled with comfort and joy, they are also often filled with stress. Finding the perfect holiday gifts, financing those gifts, decorating the home, reuniting with family – these are all typical holiday stressors that the average American cannot avoid. One way people can cope with this stress is through humor. Research even shows that those that use humor to cope with stress have less heart attacks during the holidays, and are less likely to have mental breakdowns as well. Thus companies should consider giving away fun and humorous promo products during the stressful holiday season. Promo products such as custom bobbleheads would be sure to provide any recipient with a stress-relieving laugh!

You Can Bet on the Success of Gambling Promo Products

Gambling promo products are great items to advertise a brand. They are unique and fun and can appeal to a large number of people. Simple decks of cards can be used by the youth for fun games of go fish. Or gambling promo products like poker sets would be great for an older demographic, especially when you consider that the gambling industry has grown tenfold in the U.S. since 1975. These sets can include everything from the cards and dice to an assortment of poker chips. Plus, these items can bring wide exposure for your brand as they are usually used with groups of people.

Energy-Saving Promo Products

Energy costs have been increasing greatly in recent years. In fact, in the United States energy consumption has more than tripled since the 1950s. Thus movements to reduce energy use is no longer reserved for those extreme environmental enthusiasts. Any company can become more energy efficient in the workplace and there are many promo products that can help do so – while promoting a business’s brand! Companies can use promo products like the computer power saver buttons that save more energy than standard sleep mode on a computer. Water powered calculators and clocks are another great example of ways to reduce energy use in the office.

New Twists on Classic Promo Products

There are so many different promo products to choose from in the promotional marketing industry. It is enticing to choose new and unique products that seem to be so different from all the rest, but in the end those items may not serve to be very beneficial to your advertising means if they are not truly functional to your clients. Consider choosing classic promo products that are proven to be popular and useful to the public but perhaps are slightly updated with a spin. For example, you can order the String-A-Sling Cinch Pack made out of fleece for a winter promotion instead of its original polyester version.

Alter Your Image With Promo Products

The American toy company Tonka, known for its toy trucks, is getting a makeover – or at least its logo is. The new version seems to be outwardly trying to imitate a rough, rugged appearance, despite the fact that many of its toys, geared toward toddlers, are not. Many companies, like Tonka, often feel the need to alter their image slightly as the times change and their company grows and using promo products is an excellent way to do so. Promo products give people material objects that reinforce the identity of a business, even if it is a new one.

Promo Products for the Road this Holiday Season

It is officially the holiday season, and along with thoughts of Santa Clause and sugar plums dancing in our dreams, comes long-distance traveling to visit family and friends. In fact, the number of long-distance trips during the Christmas/New Year’s holiday period rises by 23 percent, compared to the average number for the rest of the year, most of which is done by personal vehicle. With such a large number of consumers out on the roads during this time, companies should consider giving promo products that are meant for traveling and the automobile. Promo products such as the Leed’s Milano Travel Atlas would make a great holiday gift for employees or clients who are hitting the road.

Thanksgiving Inspired Promo Products

The very first Thanksgiving is considered to be the great feast that took place by the pilgrims in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation giving thanks to God for providing them with enough food to survive the winter. Today we commemorate this banquet by gathering with family and friends, sharing a large meal, and giving our own thanks, and your company can take part in the celebration of Thanksgiving with holiday-inspired promo products. You can choose to give away promo products such as turkey shaped stress relievers customized with your company’s name and logo. Or you can even order promotional Applewood Smoked Turkeys for corporate gifts!

Safety Promo Products for the Manufacturing Industry

During the year 2007, there were approximately 783, 100 occupational injuries and illnesses that occurred in the United States with the leading causes being contact with objects and equipment, overexertion and repetitive motion, and falls. By ordering promo products for safety in the workplace, manufacturing companies can not only display their brand but also, and more importantly, keep their employees safe. The promo products industry provides everything from clear lens safety glasses approved for safety by the American National Standards Institute to retractable badge holders with break away neck cords for quick and easy release in case of workplace incidents involving machines.

Promo Products to Facilitate Home Sales

Multiple news sources announced this morning that sales of existing homes increased by over 10% in October, the biggest increase in over two years. While many praise the tax credit given to first-time homebuyers for its role in the sales jump, promo products certainly play a role in the real estate market as well. In fact, promo products and the real estate market go hand in hand. From sticky notes to banners and flags and many other items, promo products are a great way for real estate agents to display their names and faces to potential buyers and take advantage of the great improvement in the housing market.

Promo Products for Medical Professionals

This week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed medical guidelines for how often women should be screened for certain types of cancer. Like any change, especially one in the medical field, these new recommendations are sure to bring uncertainty and confusion. One of the best ways for medical companies to overcome any confusion in the field is to distribute promo products. Promo products increase brand visibility and, over time, help companies in the healthcare industry to establish valuable relationships with medical professionals. And, recent studies show that promo products in the healthcare field even drive patients to inquire about certain medicines or procedures and learn more about their health.

Totes and Bags- Ideal Promo Products of Tradeshows

Whether you are in the manufacturing industry or the healthcare industry, totes and bags are ideal promo products to distribute at tradeshows. These cost-effective items offer many advantages, including the fact that they have wide imprint areas for easy personalization. When attendees carry around promo products that bear your company name and logo, they are essentially displaying your brand as they travel from booth to booth. In addition to their high visibility, these promo products are incredibly functional too. Recipients can place the brochures they receive in the bags, ensuring that your brand is the first thing they see when they go to review the handouts.

Differentiate Your Promo Products for Different Events

The promo products that will best benefit companies’ advertising efforts can be significantly different depending on the type of event through which they are being distributed. For example, at events such as trade shows, businesses are often vying for consumers’ attention as they wander around large exhibition halls, so promo products such as toys and games are often given away to entice attendees to advertisers’ booths. At events like conferences, however, the best promo products are those that can be useful to the participants during the actual event. Promotional drinkware is an excellent choice as conference attendees will surely need to stay hydrated with plenty of water – and plenty of coffee – during long lectures and panel discussions!

Communicate Your Message With Promo Products

While it is important for potential consumers to remember your company’s name, you also want them to remember the services or products you provide. Many companies thus choose promo products that directly correspond to their industry, such as USB drives for the computer industry or bandage dispensers for a business in the healthcare industry. If you cannot find a promo product that you feel correlates to your particular industry, consider choosing an item that you can choose items that will indirectly relate to your company’s services or message. For example, those companies that are meant to help people relax such as salons or spas could choose stress relievers to give away.

Promo Products for Your Car

It is estimated that Americans spend approximately 540 hours each year in their vehicles. As a place where such a significant amount of time is spent in our daily lives, companies should consider utilizing automotive items as promo products to increase brand awareness. From air fresheners to automotive organizers, these promo products, when customized with your company’s brand name and logo, will provide tons of marketing exposure to the recipient of the product and any passengers he/she takes along for a ride as well! Plus, these products are not only useful, but also unique, allowing your business to stand out from the rest.

Plan Ahead With Promo Products Like Calendars

Promo products such as promotional calendars make excellent end-of-the year gifts for clients. From wall calendars, to desktop calendars, to personal daily planners, these items are timely relevant, and can provide exposure to your brand the entire yearlong! These promo products have low production costs too, but you still should make sure to plan ahead and make sure you order them in time. In fact, you may want to order your calendars as early as late summer or early fall because custom calendars are so popular that many items sell out late in the year and pricing even increases.

Brand Name Promo Products to Impress!

When choosing brand name promo products to advertise your own brand, not only will recipients be impressed by your use of such reputable items, but they are also likely to attribute the same traits of the brand name like value and quality to your company too. There are tons of brand name promo products that are available in today’s market from pens by Paper Mate® to apparel by Nike®. Plus you can rely on any items produced by these well-known brand names, knowing that they are products with the highest quality whose ink won’t run out too fast, and whose apparel won’t wear easily.

Target the Youth With Your Promo Products

Kids have a lot of buying power in today’s market so customizing promo products to target this demographic may be a beneficial advertising effort for your business. In fact, recent studies from Research International show that 67 per cent of all products bought by adults are influenced by youth. So even if your company does not provide products or services that are directly meant for the younger generations, customizing promo products in a way that appeal to this audience may still be beneficial. Choose marketing messages that appeal to the youth’s sense of humor, or even choose products that they would be drawn to the most like games or MP3 players.

Pens – Classic, Practical Promo Products

Everyone, adults and children, men and women, southerners and northerners, can benefit from the use of a pen. Thus they have the ability to advertise a brand to a number of different audiences, making pens one of the most popular promo products in the industry! Cost effective, easy to distribute, and with a wide variety of styles available on the market, there is sure to be a pen that is perfect for any brand and any budget. Use these promo products customized with your company’s name and logo as your next giveaway and you will see results from this advertising effort.

Boost Your Brand Exposure– Use Promo Products to Decorate Your Booth at Marketing Events

In addition to making sure their employees are effectively advertising their brand by wearing logo apparel, companies need to make sure that their stations at events are also outfitted in promo products to promote their business. One of the easiest ways to do so is to order promo products such as table covers or table skirts to decorate stations such as booths at trade shows. These items provide an extra-large imprint area to customize with a company’s name and logo, allowing all event attendees to have exposure to one’s brand. Most of these products are suitable for indoor and outdoor use too so you can use them over and over again for company picnics, banquets and more!

Promo Products Aiding in Security Measures and More

Security is a prominent issue in today’s corporate world and promo products such as name badges can help enforce safety measures by making sure all employees have proper identification. Plus these promo products can have the additional benefit of aiding in increasing awareness for a company’s brand when they are worn outside of the office at events such as trade shows or conferences, displaying not only employees’ names but that of the company they work for. Inside the office, particularly for large companies, one could even use these items to differentiate between employees of different departments by color-coding the badges.

Promo Products to Help Event Attendees Gain Info

One of the main purposes of events like trade shows and conferences is for attendees to have the opportunity to gain information about industries and the different services and products provided by businesses within them. Make it easier for them to do so by giving promo products such as journals and jotters. There are a variety of different journals and jotters on the market. You can even find those that include solar-powered calculators and business card slots on the inside. Just be sure to customize these promo products with your company’s name and logo to ensure maximum exposure for your brand.

Use Promo Products Contests to Excite Event Attendees

A great way to increase excitement surrounding your booth at events like trade shows is to create contests for your promo products. Use custom scratch off cards, for example, that can be redeemable for different promo products. You can even have participants write their name on the cards and turn them in once they redeem their prize, to then be entered into a grand prize drawing to take place at the end of the event. In this way, you can draw people back to your booth for a second time, ensuring they get double the exposure to your company and your brand!

Promo Products for Employees at Events

At big events such as trade shows, it is not only important to have utilize promo products as impressive giveaways for event attendees, but it is also equally important to use promo items to outfit your employees. Promo products such as logo apparel and name badges or ID badge holders will not only make your employees look uniform and professional, but research shows that it can also make them appear more approachable for potential consumers. It also adds to their level of authority, allowing event guests to trust your employees to have valid answers to any and all of their questions.

Imprinting Considerations for Promo Products

In addition to choosing promo products to advertise one’s brand to potential consumers at events like trade shows, it is also important for businesses to consider the many decoration techniques by which they can customize these items with their company’s name and logo. Depending on the material with which your promo products are made, you have the options of a variety of different imprinting methods from screen-printing to laser engraving and debossing. Be sure to consider your targeted end user when choosing a method as well as, for example, screen-printing may be more appropriate for younger recipients as it employs bright colors.

Promo Products – Walking Billboards for Your Brand

Did you know that apparel is the top selling category of custom promo products, representing 1/3 of the total sales in the industry annually? The popularity in apparel as promo products lies in its ability to provide more exposure for a business than many other items, as it not only advertises a company to the recipient of the product, but to anyone with whom the wearer comes in contact. Whether it is embroidered polo shirts, or printed tees, custom apparel is an excellent means of providing wide visibility for any business, plus one can outfit their own employees in custom apparel to emit a professional, uniform look.

Edible Promo Products to Entice Trade Show Attendees

Looking for a way to increase trade show traffic toward your booth? Then use edible promo products and watch your audience numbers rise! While providing food giveaways will certainly increase traffic toward your booth, you need to make sure that the recipients of your promo products have something to remember your company by after the edibles digest. Therefore, you should consider offering these products that come packaged in tins or other packaging that can be reused, as opposed to disposed of like individual wrappers. That way you can make sure your advertising efforts will extend beyond the event!

Promo Products Secrets Revealed

Gaining an insider’s perspective into an industry with such an expansive pool of players as promo products is not an easy feat to accomplish. The abundance of competition among manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors greatly complicates the task of finding a reliable source of information to guide the purchase process of these imprinted items. However, there are some commonalities that any reputable player in the promo products industry will agree on. The immense popularity of promo products attests to the value inherent in these branded gifts and giveaways, and any trusted advisor can vouch that when properly integrated into a marketing campaign, promo products can communicate a marketing message more efficiently and cost-effectively than many other forms of advertising.

Consistent research findings performed by industry associations implicate that recipients of promo products have more favorable opinions of advertisers after receiving the items, and additionally demonstrate higher brand recall for an advertiser upon receipt of an imprinted gift or giveaway. When compared with alternative forms of advertising media, promo products warrant the lowest cost per impression, as items like wearables and pens can obtain widespread exposure for featured messages. When clients and employees are outfitted in customized apparel, any passersby whom they come in contact with is subsequently reached by the advertiser’s desired communication. Likewise, writing utensils garner frequent usage by people from all walks of life, thereby achieving similar success in spreading an advertiser’s message to a large base of potential clients with a minimal upfront investment. No matter which promo products an advertiser chooses to imprint with a unique message, these items hold enormous potential to help the advertiser attain his or her intended end results.