Promotional Gifts Can Be Used in Varied Ways!

Well, it's the right time to look for some of the best and effective marketing strategies as the competition among businesses is increasing day by day. Surviving in this fiercely competitive market is really tough and businesses are now opting for different marketing strategies to achieve new targets. In this regard promotional gifts can offer you great platform on which you can start visualizing the growth of your business sector. These days, many businesses are opting for promotional items and they are integrating this stuff with their marketing strategies to make it more compelling. On the other hand your boss may be looking for something unique to add for the marketing standards of the company! Well, you can suggest him for the promotional items, as these products are proven to be the most compelling stuff that can be added with your marketing standards.

All you need to convince the boss about such products and the best way is that speaking his language and he will understand the thing easily! There are several ways for how to use promotional gifts for your business improvements and here you will look for few of them.

• Promotional gifts are the great way to get brand recognition from the market. Brand recognition is what getting more necessary for business and without it you cannot make your products or services successful in the market. A branded gift or the slogan of your company on an attractive product can bring the brand recognition for your business. And that is what exactly promotional items can achieve for you

• Promotional gifts are the best way to get the right kind of impression about your company from a potential customer. Select something stylish and attractive and print the name of your company on it. The customers are surely going to remember it when its time for business.

• When you package your message as helpful you can look for double or triple of your trade show. It's always better to give out promotion items before you opt for the trade show. You will surely get double traffic. This is a good way to achieve more contacts hence the sales rate will improve significantly.

• Promotional gifts are also coming for corporate sectors. These are the best products to gain customer loyalty. If you are selling your product through a network created by distributors then promotional items are going to cement your business relationship with the distributors. This is also going to ensure that your company will gain preferential billing when it's all about making the sale.

• Promotional gifts can be used as thank you gifts for your esteemed customers. This is a good way to retain customers and also a great way to explain your customers that you value their relationship.

Paula D. Jones is the webmaster of http://funprintables.coolestwebtips.com where she provides a huge selection of high quality printables for ALL ages & ALL occasions for FREE. Come take a look...

Buying Advertising - Go For the Value, Not the Deal

Buy Value - Not Price!

I want to talk about value in advertising...because I just cannot understand why some businesses buy what they buy when they're trying to attract more customers. I have met with so many businesses who buy advertising based on three principles:

• I want it cheap
• I want to spread by money around to several media
• I want to market to everybody

Technically speaking, there's nothing wrong with any of the three by themselves if you know what you're doing and you have a really big ad budget. BUT....don't you love those Buts?....it typically does not work.

More than anything, you want the best advertising media VALUE in your market . In some areas, it could be coupons or a niche magazine. But most often, it's one of two media - cable TV or the internet. Why?

They are the only two media sources overall that are actually growing and are actually changing as the future changes. Most businesses though don't understand either of them all that well. The Old School Business owner LOVES the newspaper, or any print for that matter. Here's what I'll say to that...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Not only are newspapers a really poor value....they are swiftly on the decline as far as usage and cost an astronomical amount for the targets you hit! Let me illustrate -

You buy a 1/2 page ad in your newspaper and it costs $2,000. It goes out to maybe 50,000 households. You don't know which section your ad will be in because most papers won't tell you. Once the papers are delivered, read, and recycled, your ad is gone. IN ONE DAY - IT'S GONE!

You take that $2,000 and put it in cable TV on Fox News, CNN, ESPN....ok toss in a little Food Channel, and you get 200 commercials over a few weeks. Not one day. They have staying power and will most likely reach about 10 times the audience with sight, sound, motion, and emotion.

So What Defines Value?

Value is very simple - how much does it cost me to reach each person in my Primary Demographic Target audience? Your PDT is that group of people where most of your business comes from - that one group you cannot do without - or else! If you are trying to reach women 35-54, it's a guess whether or not the newspaper will do that for you. However, you KNOW the Food Network, HGTV, Bravo, and Lifetime zero in on that target. That's Value because you get so much more advertising dollar for dollar AND your target is hit over and over. The definition of advertising is: "The number of times you can hit your primary target over the head when they are in buying mode".

Let's go back to the three points - Cheap, Spread Your Money Around, and Target Everybody.

My dad always said, You buy cheap - you get cheap. That's often true...unless you know a little secret that I'll reveal in my member lessons. Honestly, you can go into a cable TV or radio station and get really "cheap" advertising. You just have to know a few tricks of the trade. Most business owners just try and get the price down, and that can really hurt your chances of running in good programming.

Spreading your money around is great if you have a whole lot of it and don't mind flushing some down the toilet. But here's the secret - do a media mix that makes sense. And one that makes sense has two ingredients - Reach and Frequency. You can "reach" your target audience on any budget and you can do it "a lot of times" if you are in the right medium. If your media doesn't do this, cancel it!

If you want to target everybody....I can honestly say to you that you need professional help marketing your business. It's not that you don't WANT everybody, you can NOT spend your hard earned money trying to TARGET everybody. You absolutely have a PDT - Primary Demographic Target. We'll spend some time later defining that more....but take some time and find out who you really need to go after. Who's the Bread & Butter Client? That's where you need to spend your energy....others will come too, but go for the Bread and go for the Butter and we'll talk later about how to get more on your sandwich than just butter!

Have a great week and have fun!

© Tim Orwig 2009 - Tradezone Marketing

Tim Orwig is a marketing and advertising coach, specializing in helping local businesses attract and keep more customers. Using his unique methods, his clients saturate and dominate their local markets and eliminate the competition at every customer contact point. Having spent several years in the marketing and advertising fields, his insider knowledge to leverage local advertising has helped hundreds of clients thrive in any economy.

You may contact Tim at Tim@DominateYourTradezone.com, http://www.Twitter.com/TimOrwig, or visit his website at http://www.DominateYourTradezone.com, where you can register for free weekly advertising tips or have your TV, print, or radio ad reviewed for free.

Do Ads That Use Cliches Or Humor Work?

Do cliches, humor or corny ad slogans work? Here are some examples of what I am talking about: "The Summer Sales are Really Starting to Heat up!" or "Check out our Vacuums, they Really Suck!" We see and hear these all the time, whether it's TV, Radio, Print or Internet ads.

You would think our instinct is to roll our eyes and maybe let out a chuckle and move on right? The answer surprisingly is no, we may indeed roll our eyes, we may even chuckle out loud, but we do not skip the ad! As a matter of fact, not only do we check out the ad it usually sticks with us for the day we even tell at least a few of our friends and co-workers about it. This is exactly what we want from our ad and if we are clever enough to ensure our brand is related in some positive way, they will remember your company.

What was the last commercial you remember with serious, dramatic or worrying content? If you can come up with an ad that contains even the slightest bit of humor it will usually sell for you. I believe, we find it easier to see things with humor involved especially during a recession and there is a different variety of humor from slapstick to sarcasm that will make people laugh or smile. Let's face it most of us will groan at a bad joke but we will remember it.

Now I would not base an entire ad campaign on humorous or cliched ads, however, now don't laugh, I would definitely include at least one humor ad in my campaign! There is no real downside as funny will sell and if the ad doesn't generate sales it may set up a sale for the next time they see another one of your ads.

He enjoys working full time for Adlandpro an Online Advertising Company. Helping others promote, advertise and market their online business! He has worked in several areas of marketing and promotion which include all forms of advertising (TV, Radio, Print and Internet) He has also attended various North American Trade Shows (Canada/U.S.A.) representing companies in both promotions and sales. http://www.adlandpro.com