Corporate merchandise can help you achieve many goals for your business, including increasing brand awareness, encouraging customer loyalty and helping to define your brand identity.
However, in order for your promotional merchandise to be effective, you need to get your messaging right and make sure it strikes the right chord with your customers. This can help to ensure that you engage positively with your target market and that you achieve your own promotional goals.
So how do you get your promotional messaging right for your corporate merchandise? In this article we look at the key things you need to consider to make sure your corporate merchandising is a success.
What are you trying to achieve with your corporate merchandise?
To pick the right messaging for your merchandise, you first have to know what you are trying to achieve. Is your main goal to attract new customers? Or are you hoping to reward existing customers? Is the merchandise designed to be an active reminder of your business so customers are more likely to come back to you in future?
Once you have defined your goals for your promotional merchandise, then you can start to think about what to include in your messaging to help you achieve those goals. This can also help guide you in your choice of merchandise.
For example, if you are using your merchandise to attract new customers, you are likely to want to go for lower value products, so you can spread your budget further and increase your chances of generating paying customers. Promotional t-shirts are a popular choice which are genuinely useful, while relatively inexpensive.
Knowing your target audience
When it comes to picking both your messaging and the types of merchandise to use it on, knowing your target audience is key. Promotional water bottles with an inspiring message might work perfectly if you are a sports or fitness business, but would probably be less effective if you were a law firm.
Understanding who your ideal customers are, what their needs are and what they will find engaging about a brand like yours means you can produce carefully tailored messaging that addresses their needs.
Put yourself into your customers’ shoes and try to think about their major concerns and pain points. What can you offer that addresses these issues? And how can you encapsulate your offering into your messaging? This will allow you to craft engaging messaging that connect with your target customers personally, making a much bigger impact.
When to give out your corporate merchandise
There are various instances where people typically give out corporate merchandise and what occasion you are targeting can affect both your messaging and choice of merchandise.
Industry events, such as trade shows or conferences, are a common choice for reaching out to new potential customers and creating brand awareness. Your messaging here will likely want to be fairly bold and simple, to make a big impact and ensure you stand out from your competitors. This could be as straightforward as promotional pens with your company name, contact details and key value proposition.
Alternatively, you can think about more innovative ways to use your corporate merchandise to get your message across. One clever way to get more out of your merchandise is to encourage re-gifting. This means giving out merchandise and telling the recipient to pass it on, usually after doing something specific with it.
For example, you could give out branded pedometers and ask people to track how many steps they take to work, or round the office in a single day. Then tell them to share the results with you on Twitter, Instagram and other social media before passing the pedometer on and encouraging the next person to do the same.
This creates a genuinely useful and interesting experience for the receiver and means a single piece of merchandise can make contact with several different potential customers, who will also help spread your brand through their social media networks.
Choosing your promotional messaging
If you understand your target market and what you need to communicate with them, the next thing to clearly define is what your customers need and how you can answer that need. This is what your messaging needs to communicate.
For example, if you run a parcel delivery service, key concerns of your customers might be that their packages will turn up quickly, in good condition and that they won’t have to sit around all day waiting for them.
Your messaging can then stress your solutions to these issues, for example that you guarantee delivery within a set number of business days, your deliveries are fully insured and that you offer online tracking so customers know exactly when to expect you.
This then addresses your customers specific concerns up front, making them much more likely to choose you next time they need a delivery service. Your value proposition is right there on your merchandise, acting as a permanent reminder.
In summary, effective promotional messaging needs to:
- Understand your customers’ needs
- Offer a solution
- Help them to act on their need and access your solution
If the messaging you use with your corporate merchandise covers these key points, you are much more likely to see positive results.
Fitting your messaging to your merchandise
One thing that is always important to consider is how your messaging will fit onto your chosen merchandise. In the most basic terms, the smaller the product, the less you can fit on it (without resorting to writing so small it will become a challenge to read!).
If you have a short, simple message to get across, something like printed keyrings can work well, but if you want to communicate something longer and more in depth, you may need to consider alternatives. Promotional shopping and tote bags can give you plenty of space to work with, while being genuinely useful to customers. They give extra, free expose every time they walk around your local area.
Find corporate merchandise that strikes the right chord every time
Looking for the perfect corporate merchandise to help you connect with your customers effectively? We have a whole range of promotional merchandise options suitable for any type or size of business, no matter what your sector.
We supply top brands including Amazon, Cadbury, Disney and Google, as well as an extensive range of small and medium sized businesses. Our approach is tailored to the needs of you and your customers, so no matter who you are, we can help you find the perfect merchandise for your business.
Take a look at our full range of promotional merchandise to see what we have on offer and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
