How To Do Promotional Pens The Right Way
There Are 3 Key Mandatories When Ordering Promotional Pens Online.
Pens can be amazingly effective and powerful as a marketing promo item. Though they’re handed out willy -nilly and in recent times they’ve lost some of their allure as seen as a cheap and cheerful product, a commodity in promo merchandise.
Pens as a promo piece are easy to get right, though often the humble promo pen is produced and delivered completely wrong. Innovative ideas and dynamic thought will ensure you get the best value for your promotional buck with COG Promo Pens.
1) Match Your Pen To Your Target Client
Ideal client, not necessarily current, average client. Promotional pens are really about expressing your business’ personality, but more so, communicating to your clients (or prospects) that you understand them.
Pen Gift BoxGift boxed pens are a great gift for an office professional, but not for a tradie!
Giving them a gift that is actually useful will go much further in terms of resonating with them than a thoughtless, generic item aimed at the masses.
Think of your ideal client – once you have that mental picture crystal clear, select your printed pens with them mind.
Most clients and prospects will appreciate some form of a promotional gift as a gesture, but, you’re aim is to land the next big, loyal customer who will do business with you long-term.
Of course, it’s not just about usefulness, but also about style. In a digital world, pens have become more of an aesthetic item that is treated and cherished like an accessory. Match the style of the custom pens to your ideal client to make your brand memorable.
If your client or prospect receives your printed pens and thinks, “Why would they send this to me?” you’ve missed the mark and created a negative impression of your brand.
The Golden rule in marketing is that anytime a potential customer has a thought involving your brand, that association should be positive.
To make things simple, we’ve organised our promotional pens to make selecting the right choice much easier.
2) The Delivery Needs To Be Flawless
Stuffing your pens into coffee mug on the front counter is a fail.
While your pens are stylish… the delivery is on half way there.
Prior to ordering your new promotional pens online or on the phone, you need a dedicated and considered marketing plan for ensuring your new pens end up in the hands of the right customers and people. Any marketing plan will include a budget, and here you need to allocate a portion of your promotional pen campaign budget to this component. COG Promo know if you skimp here your promo pens marketing campaign may only work half as well as it could.
Strategically targeting increases the likelihood of a targeted customer / individual into taking action with your brand and business. Importantly this strategy also decreases negative perception of the humble promotional pen. This form of promotional products is popular and you need to leverage every bit of it to make it work. If we fail here then the promotional pen set can be received as an unwanted gift or irrelevant sticking filler that is detrimental to building brand equity and brand recall.
COG Strategy can offer assistance with product campaign strategy and COG Digital can assist you with the analytical tools available online that are vital tools which offer an opportunity to narrow in on your targeted demographic.
Allocating time and brain power towards GeoTargeting and Promotional Strategy can be the make or break for your promo pen marketing campaign.
The key to this component of promo marketing is to begin with a dataset and organised information about your prospects and ideal target customers first. If you’re targeting people who you already have some basic contact information for such as postal addresses etc, introduce behaviours that will have you automatically categorising this customer data into spreadsheets (Save in Google Drive as ‘Sheets’ for easy Cloud-based recall) so you can use your data and lists time and time again.
When it comes time to design and order your logo pens, you will need to consider the basics such as what promotional pen style will fit the brief, and how high the quality of the promo pen is most appropriate. Selecting where the promotional pen will function such as the office or the car is key. Think about if the pen will live its life in a Golf Bag or in the dashboard of a taxi, or will it be in a promotional gift bag for a trade show.
Making this decision is made clear when you think client out, first consider their needs and how they’ll use the gift pen. You need to consider that you’re targeting the preferred client – the A Grade Promo Customer! Spending time on your promotional strategy perfecting your delivery can deliver results that not only elevate the success of your promotional pen marketing but also deliver insights about your target market. It’s never too late to address new findings and revert back to Step 1 and get your promotional marketing accurate and high powered! Remember – your results here are what it impacts.
3) You Must Include a Call To Action!
It’s gotta be quick, witty, smart and it has to cut through.
The marketing strategy is one thing, the communication is the third most important factor in promo pen campaigning.
Question, do your promotional pens have an actual point to make?
Would you deliver a custom designed pen that does not have key obvious point to make?
Take all the standard marketing channels, television, radio, internet ads – rarely do they not ever ask you to do something. This applies directly to promotional marketing and promotional merchandise, and yes promo pens!
Your customer (or targeted individual) has your logo branded pen in their hand… now what?!
This whole pen promotion activity has been based on the actual steps this person will take after immediately receiving this pen. Imagine if they grab it, read it, laugh and show their friend – BANG!
If the pen is not the ultimate most amazing promotional pen they’ve ever had, that feels glorious in their fingers AND it makes them laugh, make a phone call, search for something on the internet, or best of all, keep it because they feel it too good to throw away or discard then its successful. Just because its free shouldn’t lower the starting point of the recipients expectations.
Recognising that the promo pen will likely be a free, well-placed, timed, and thoughtful gift is the most powerful opportunity and characteristic of your promo pen, its only logical to request action from the recipient right?! Welcome to the CTA (Call To Action).
When your promo pen campaign strategy has determined the desired function and targeted customer, you’ll then have an audience that knows how to reach your business and what your brand represents. That’s the core of what you’re doing with this whole promo pen campaign… reaching out to the customer and saying, “Enjoy this free product, it’s from our brand. We know you exist and appreciate you. Please consider contacting us if you need our services.”
When you promotional pen fails with a clear Call To Action, the customer could simply assume you’re a pen manufacturer (or other promotional merchandise), without making the mental connection that this item is a gift – and then your campaign is a fail.
Push for the Call To Action – its what sets you apart from your competitors. The more consideration, research, strategy and marketing function you include into the design and delivery of your custom pens, the more chance you’ll have a campaign success – and that’s what COG Promo can help your brand with.
In Summary
Follow this methodology when planning out your printed pens campaign to avoid spending hard earned money on a marketing campaign fail.
With each step, consider any implications it has regarding previous steps, and revisit them as needed until all 3 work together as one promo campaign. Design for your target, take proper aim, and have a desired result specified.
COG Promo makes doing promo pens easy – though it isn’t without help. And that’s what we’re here for! Building your client base with promotional marketing methods is proven to be successful, so do it right with COG Promo.
