Tweet

Promotional Industry Misses the Boat

Written by: Warren Gencher

Article Overview: People love to receive FS (Free Stuff);

Promotional Industry Misses the Boat

Promotional Industry Misses the Boat

Even after the tech meltdown of 2000-01, overall marketing budgets fell by less than the decrease in sales in the promotional industry. And then when marketing budgets started to recover, the promotional industry lagged behind. Why is that?






Well, frankly, the promotional industry missed the boat, that’s why. Companies think about promotional items last. After, say, they have designed a marketing program for the quarter or the year worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, somebody says: “Oh, yeah, don’t forget to order a few hundred pens, mugs and key chains for us too.”

Well, that isn’t the future for this industry and if it is, we should all be looking for new jobs. The promotional products industry has to move up the food chain and embrace marketing solutions.

Marketing solutions is all about intricating promotional products into the very fabric of the organization’s marketing plan. Why, so the industry can make more money? No, so the industry’s clients can be more effective in their marketing and they can make more money (an coincidentally, the promotions industry can too).

People love to receive FS (Free Stuff); they’ll go to ridiculous lengths to get stuff for free. When you reward a high-performing employee or a valued client with a cash bonus or cash back incentive, almost half of it can be eaten up by the taxman (in the case of the employee) or it is just spent in a few days anyway on something else. Give that same employee or client a company-branded DVD player and every time she turns it on, she is reminded of what a great employer or supplier she has… for years.

And the company’s brand on the DVD player is visual and permanent and can’t be zapped like people zap TV commercials or flip radio stations when a commercial message comes on. And unlike a newspaper ad, it keeps on working for years, not 20 minutes.



There go your Marketing Dollars


Marketing solutions means doing more Agency-style work, like making sure that the right promotional items are selected reflecting the demographics of the target group, like making sure that the delivery solution is in place (no one needs a warehouse full of undeliverable FS), like having some type of call-to-action so you can track and measure the efficacy of the campaign and its ROI (Return on Investment) too, like doing some follow up study and research so you can constantly improve what you do.

Warren Gencher, President of Brymarkpromostore.com, one of North Americas leading providers of TQA marketing solutions in the promotional products space. warren@brymark.com

Related Articles
  Financing A Boat Trailer
  Can You Afford A New Boat Loan
  Getting Boat Finance For Your Dream Boat
  Riveria Boat Loans
  Boat finance For Your New Quintrex

Article Tags: cash bonus, coincidentally, commercial message, food chain, free stuff, key chains, marketing plan, marketing program, marketing solutions, meltdown, new jobs, newspaper ad, promotional items, promotional products, radio stations, ridiculous lengths, solutions marketing, taxman, tv commercials, worth hundreds



Related Forum Posts
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - Hello, I am really very grateful to this thread for this great information for the best strategy for internet marketing and also looking for internet marketing specialist which define me some more guidance. Thanks. [Promotional link removed by forum admin]
Re: Twitter releasing real time analytics - Hi Evan, Thanks you for the heads up on that, it will be interesting to see how the analytics works out but Twitter has had to evolve pretty quickly to keep pace with the requirements of the Industry so I suppose it was a natural development. regards, Mal.
Re: Trade Shows - Are They Worth It? - HI, I have used trade shows (not participated) to collect potential clients. For example, the Home & Garden Industry is extremely behind the time in regards to their websites. I attended an Home & Garden Expo in Denver and collected all the companies contact information. I plan on cold calling & mailing information to each business. It also gave me time to research the industry more, talk directly to the owners in many cases, and learn more about what they need. Jeff
Re: Prospects in animation business in coming years. - Yes the Animation Industry is growing and it needs cost effectiveness, more employees producing quality work. Whether you make a 2d or a 3d animation it requires lots of money, concentration, patience and it sometimes become painful too. Half of the job is done once you have developed the storyboarding. As video advertising is growing, it would adversely affect the television advertising. Recent trends have shown that advertising budgets for online advertising is rapidly growing against television advertising all over across the world. Gaming industry is on its peak these days and animation is in huge demand.
Re: Which Social Media Drives The Most Traffic? - LOL, I think you could be right there David, that was the bit I found interesting too because the true shelf life of a link is something I wasn't really aware of. You tend to think a link is there for good but we don't really know. On a similar topic but about directory listings, how about things like Directory Submitter, I use that with any new site I have but after you have spent days, weeks or even months trawling thru the whole A-Z of the directory, how long do they stay there. Some will tell you up front that it may take your site 6 months before it may even be listed but how long do they hold you’re listing before you have to start from scratch and submit all over again. If a listing is still current you will usually get a pop up when you go thru it all again but who has the time to do that?. A logical thing would be to have a marker next to each site that is current in the A-Z to allow you to pass over those. That’s wishful thinking of course but shelf life on all of these things is a grey area and it would be nice to have some Industry standards to work from but that’s probably a long time away. regards, Mal.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Make Small Commitments. Get Big Changes.

Ten Things You Can Do To Be a Better Leader

Entrepreneurs and the “Oh! No!” Trap

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.