Business Promotional Products Facts, or Shall We Call Them Reasons to Use?

Business promotional products is the subject matter of a survey recently released by the Advertising Specialty Institute (survey covered US, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia).  Though there are differences in percentages from country to country, some things are the same.
 

1. Writing instruments are the most owned promotional instruments in all countries surveyed.  The next nine most owned items (though not in the same order in all countries) are:
   

2.               Shirts

3.               Calendars

4.               Bags

5.               Caps/Headwear

6.               Desk/Office/Business Accessories

7.               Food Items

8.               Glassware/ceramics (includes mugs)

9.               Health and Safety Products

2. Writing instruments are the ones that are used the most (18.2 times in the US and Canada, 19 times a month in Great Britain, 17.6 times in Australia.

Desk/office/business accessories and glassware/ceramics (includes mugs) are the next most used items in all countries (except the US where automotive and electronics/computer items are used most; though this is based on such a small number of respondents that ASI cautions against relying too much on the numbers for these categories).

3. The overall winner? Bags, with a average lifetime impressions of 7,224, average cost of $10 per item, average per-impression cost of 0.001 cents.  The next 9, by number of impressions are (numbers are averages):

2.               caps/headwear

2,984 lifetime impressions, cost of $6/item, 0.002 cents/impression  

3.               electronics/computers

2,243 lifetime impressions, cost of $13/item, 0.006 cents/impression (numbers based on a small sample)

4.               shirts

2,208 average lifetime impressions, cost of $11/item, 0.005 cents/impression

5.               writing instruments

2,005 lifetime impressions, cost of $3/per item,     0.001 cents/impression

6.               calendars

1,984 lifetime impressions, cost of $5/item, 0.003 cents/impression

 7.               Recognition awards/trophies/plaques

1,634 lifetime impressions, cost of $35/item, 0.021 cents/impression

 8.               desk/office/business accessories

1,324 lifetime impressions, cost of $10/item, 0.008 cents/impression

 9.               glassware/ceramics (including mugs)

1,307 lifetime impressions, cost of $5/item, 0.004 cents/impression.

Is that the whole story? No.  The same survey, quoting several outside sources, like the Nielsen Company, tells you that no other marketing method has lower per impression cost.

Higher:

Prime time TV - $0.018/impression

National magazines $0.045/impression

Spot radio $0.058/impression.

More Comparable (but still far):

Syndicated (Day) TV - $0.005/impression

Cable TV (Prime Time) $0.005/impression

Billboards - $0.002/impression

Internet - $0.003//impression

The average cost per impression for all business promotional products is $0.005.  (All the above costs are for US.)

Is that the whole story?  No, it’s not: 83% of the US survey participants say they can identify the advertiser on a business promotional product they own.  Glassware/ceramics (includes mugs) and shirts did the best here (87% fir glassware/ceramics, 86% for shirts), and electronics/computer items did the worst (31%).  Every other product of the top 10 by impressions had at least 70% recall ability.

Receiving business promotional products increases people’s opinion of the business that does the giving in at least 30% of the people and by as much as 64%, on average, in the US, 11% had a significantly more favorable opinion and 30% had a somewhat more favorable opinion. 

Sixty percent of the people did business with the business that gave them the promotional product (average across all products for the US), with recognition-awards/trophies/plaques and glassware/ceramics (includes mugs) at the top (71 and 70%, respectively) and health and safety products at the bottom (46%). 

The survey does not address this, but it would be awesome if we knew how many of the people who did business with a company after they received a promotional product from them would not have done business with it had they not received a promotional product.

Are you convinced yet that using business promotional products makes sense?  To me it seems like a no-brainer since they’re inexpensive and effective.  Of course, the effectiveness varies from business to business, based on factors such as market segmentation, quality of product and personalization, product delivery methods, message (logo, logo + something else), etc. 

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For more information about promotional products (personalized water bottles, personalized coffee mugs, etc) visit PersonalizedPromotionalProductsPrinting.com

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