Sunday, 27 December 2009

Promotional Merchandise - Effective Marketing tool of 2011

By Liz Logan

The UK is in one of the longest recessions in history with 6% of economic output lost. Despite quantitative easing banks still are not lending to smaller businesses. An estimate of nearly 30,000 businesses closed in 2009 and we are still not out of the woods yet. As a business, if you have made it this far, that is great news. You may have seen some of your competitors fail, lessening the competition in the market. This means even though the market share may be less, you have a bigger slice of it. In the end it will be the strong companies that will survive. The ones that are easy to adapt to a crisis and probably will be strong for years to come.

Even though there are continual economic issues, it continues to be vital to efficiently market your business. A business that doesn't have efficient marketing won't be able to keep thriving. It might be necessary for you to decrease your budget and maintain the areas with the greatest rate of efficiency. Cutting the budget completely could be a huge error. A business that's not obtaining new customers actively can't grow. As current clients go away, the customer base diminishes which means that halting marketing completely might be a deadly error.

What all this boils down to is making sure that your marketing has a lot more punch and is well targeted. All of the budget must be spent on reaching the right market in the right fashion. Your marketing campaign must be engaging. It should capture the imagination of your target audience and make them sit up and notice your brand. You need to give your customers a reason why they should go to you and not your competitors. Your campaign must have an impact and to do so it must last for a while. Things like spending your entire budget on a single 30 second commercial must be avoided.

This could seem like a lot from any strategy of marketing, yet I'm about to show you one way that includes every one of these components. This way is used by nearly every business that has achieved success on this earth and currently the web has become so broadly utilized that this way is even simpler to use for your business. The solution rests in promotional merchandise.

Promotional merchandise is when a product branded with your logo and possibly company details is given to your target audience. You can choose from 1000's of different products that may reflect your company or the audience. This is much more effective that any other form of advertising as everybody loves a freebie. You can choose exactly who you want to give the items to and these products are taken in to the home or office of those very people. Promotional merchandise does not have to be expensive. There are products on the market from 8p. I know of no other advertising method that starts from this value.

This is not only a good strategy for customer acquisition but is a great method of retaining and rewarding your existing client base. Corporate gifts not only reinforce your brand, but keep them within your clients view all the time. This boosts customer loyalty and greatly increases the life time value of your customer for your business.

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