Promotional Products and a Bit of Planning Can Do Wonders for Your Bottom Line

A while back, I attended 2 networking events hosted by 2 different assisted living facilities.  Both assisted living facilities were after clients, both left money on the table.  Actually, they both did the very same things.  Both managers and their staff were on hand, talking to people, pretty brochures were neatly displayed by the door, both managers made little speeches that ended with an invitation to tour the facility.

And here it is where it got really interesting for me.  At both events a bunch of people wanted to tour the facility, 10 to 15 per group, 2 groups.  At both facilities, they were taken on the tour without someone getting their contact information.  At both facilities, at the end of the tour, they were invited again to take home one of the pretty brochures.

Effort and money have gone into setting up the event.  Why didn’t effort and money go into making sure the event would produce leads?  (I know, sometimes people who take the tour follow up themselves.  But that’s not the way to make sure you get their business.)

First, a question about your business.  Looking at your business, are there times when you don’t take full advantage of marketing opportunities?  If you’re like most people, the answer is yes.  So, stop it.

So, it looks like the managers/marketers at these 2 facilities knew about how many people would attend ahead of time.  They did not know how many would be interested in assisted living facilities.  So, they came up with a way of allowing the attendees self-identify themselves as prospects.  Then, they threw that information in the trash bin.

Was it that hard to have all the people who took the tour hand over a business card?  Then contact them?  A thank you note, preferably together with a promotional product.  Since they would have known the type of business each tour attendee owned or worked in, they could have picked something that was appropriate to that person.  Or, they could have picked something that’s appropriate to every (most) business owners, business people, something like a personalized USB flash drive or a personalized notebook.  Or something that most people use, perhaps a personalized mug. 

When I say ‘personalized’ I don’t mean just having your logo on it.  Each personalized product you give out can stand to have a call to action on it.  And calls to action are good.  Really good.

Brochures look good, and, if done correctly, they could have lots of information to reel prospects in.  But they have a very short useful life span.  Personalized products, on the other hand, can have very long useful lives.  Personalized mugs, for instance, are kept a bit over 7 months, on average, with a quarter of the people who receive them using them more than once a day.

After the thank you note and the promotional product, the assisted facilities could have followed with a series of letters, postcards, phone calls, emails that showed why they were the obvious choice, made an irresistible offer, had guarantees.  You know, proper marketing.

I’m not picking on these two facilities.  Just pointing out that they could have achieved more with a bit more planning.  And assisted living facilities are not the only ones that fail at planning.  I was recently at a grand re-opening for a chiropractor.  They had brochures and fliers and promotional products that send people to their website.  Except their website was being worked on, loaded up badly, blue writing on grey background – hard to read.  So hard, I didn’t even try.  And they might have had great information for me there.

The point is, you need to think about when and how you give away your promotional products, every step of the process.  Then you need to think if there are ways of improving the impact you have at every step.

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