Three Personalized Promotional Products Mistakes That Can Be Easily Avoided

Personalized promotional products are an effective yet inexpensive way to market (0.005 cents per impression, according to Advertising Specialties Institute, is the average). If you make mistakes, however, the price goes up fast. One mistake is easy to avoid.

Which one?

The one that has to do with what you put on the personalized promotional products you give out.

A few years back, when I was running an appraisal business, I used to receive personalized pens from one particular company. My company had a long name, longer than could fit on the pens given the font they were using. So, they put as much of it as fit.

They could have used a smaller font and show my company's full name, which I would have liked. They could have shortened some of the words, use standard abbreviations. I would have liked that too.

But, no, they decided to just cut off the end of the last word, Services to Servic. And Servic. I remember making a point not to deal with them on account of that alone. They sent me a personalized pen with a nice letter every three months for ten years, and four times a year, for ten years I used their pen while thinking they were not a good company to buy from.

The quality of your personalized promotional products must match the prospects expectations or exceed them. What you write on these personalized promotional products falls under quality, among other things.

But that's not all. Here's another mistake business owners make with personalized promotional products that's easy not to make. They get too enamored of their logos.

This is what I mean. I used to work for a bank. Come Christmas time, they gave me a desk clock with their logo on it. The clock was the right size for my desk, the logo on the clock was too big.

They made two mistakes they could have easily avoided. The logo on the clock was too large, made it too blatant a self-promotion for me and most of the people who got the same gift. Looked tacky, we thought.

They gave the same desk clock to all the people on the floor. Pretty soon, everyone was talking about the possibility the bank had left-over desk clocks from who knew what occasion and was using our floor to get rid of them and create good will. They got rid of them but not only did they not create good will, they created ill will. Definitely, not the way to go.

Personalized promotional products given at holidays to employees should show that some thought went into selecting them. People just don't like meaningless gifts and they can get annoyed if the gifts are too promotional.

So, when you send out personalized promotional products, keep in mind that what you put on them (from colors to size to words) contributes to their quality, that quality personalized promotional products with poor personalization waste your money.