Promotional products, gifts and giveaways of all kinds continue to be popular with both event organizers as well as event attendees. Visitors to your event booth or your latest conference will gladly take the free branded items you offer them — but do you know if the expense of the items provides a real benefit to you? Does it really do anything for your brand and business? The short answer is ‘Absolutely!’

Consider these benefits of promotional products as you plan your next event.

How to Stand Out with Conference Promotional Products

First, let’s talk about visibility at the event itself. Whether you are hosting an event on your own, or you have set up a booth at an expo or trade show, you want your staff and marketing materials to stand out clearly. Everyone who represents your brand should stand out in the crowd.

Therefore, as you plan your strategy for conference promotional products, start by carefully choosing what items your representative will wear and carry and how they align with your promotional products. The aim is to have clear messaging that carries through from your booth, to your booth representatives to your promotional products.

Choose Quality over Quantity

When it comes to promotional items, always choose quality over quantity. When you select promotional items, rather focus on fewer, higher quality options, than on many cheaper ones made to a lower standard. Quality speaks well for your brand in every context, from your core products and services to the promotional items you choose.

Then, think about the purpose you want your promotional items to serve. How would you like your clients to use your product, while also ensuring that your brand gets continuous promotion? Would they be better with reusable bags, or do they need water bottles for sport and exercise? Focus on creating products your customers can and will use.

Finally, make sure that the products you choose and the messaging you put on them are relevant to your brand, your event, and your audience.

The sum is greater than the individual pieces and shows your business as stable and well thought out. The benefits will speak for themselves.

What Are the Benefits of Using Promotional Products?

There is a science behind branded, promotional products. It is not necessarily about the details of the items you choose to promote your brand, but rather, the psychological principles that inform their success.

Here are some of those advantages of promotional products in event and conference marketing.

The Reciprocity Principle in Branded Promotional Products

The most important psychological principle at the heart of promotional products’ effectiveness is what is known as the reciprocity principle. This is the idea that people will generally respond in kind to a gift or good deed.

When you give a gift to a customer or potential customer, they are likely to feel a sense of obligation to do something in return, whether that is signing up for your mailing list, listening to your pitch, or even choosing your product over a competitor’s. Through corporate gifting, you invoke the reciprocity principle and foster a positive association with your brand.

Branded products inspire reciprocal action in your customers, serve as tangible reminders of your brand, inspire brand recognition and loyalty, and help to form emotional connections.

Branded Products Increase Brand Visibility

Aside from the branded materials you issue to your staff, your next step is to consider the branded products that will stand as bold representatives of your brand amongst all the hustle and bustle of your event. From the banners and flags you use to mark your stalls to the gifts you offer to your visitors, clearly branded products act as brand representatives throughout the event, creating awareness and drawing new visitors to your booth.

Who hasn’t attended an event, saw someone carrying a cool promotional product and asked “where did you get that?”

Brand visibility leads to brand recognition, which means it is about so much more than just making your brand clearly visible. Branded products will actually affect the way people feel about your brand. Your promotional products ensure consistent, ongoing exposure to your brand, which creates familiarity and trust. This is a decisive step toward the establishment of strong brand loyalty.

Your gift items should promote positive feelings toward your company and what it represents. This ability to help you build positive relationships is the true value of branded products.

The Lifespan of Promotional Products Lifespan Encourages Continuous Marketing

Perhaps most importantly, the right branded products will keep working for you long after your event has ended. They will bolster your reputation and brand recognition long after you have said goodbye to your last visitor and packed up your stall and equipment. Offer useful, attractive, clearly branded products that your visitors will enjoy using for a long time after the event. Items like travel drinkware and tote bags are always useful and thus popular long after the event. In this way, they will continue to be reminded of your brand, as well as passively promoting it on your behalf to their own colleagues, clients and friends.

Using Eco-Friendly Merchandising to Improve Brand’s Image

Here is a useful tip to boost the benefits of your promotional products even further. Consumers and businesses are increasingly choosing eco-friendly products for almost every aspect of their lives and work. Why not make sure that the branded materials you offer are made from sustainable materials?

These promotional products will serve to promote your brand while also building your company’s reputation as an organization that cares about the planet. Almost every item of event and corporate gifting you can imagine is available in eco-friendly alternatives. Speak to your supplier about their sustainable options.

Red Iron Brand Solutions is Your Partner in Promotional Product Success

At Red Iron Brand Solutions, we take pride in handling our clients with special care. Our experience in the industry of 30 years allows us to offer great ideas to our clients.

We offer specially produced promotional products that can be customized to meet your specific needs. Our unique promotional products are made to exhibit your brand in style, whether you’re participating in trade shows, hosting corporate events, or simply trying to increase brand recognition.

You can choose the ideal goods that complement your brand identity and marketing objectives with the help of our ideas for custom-produced promotional products and the knowledge of our staff. Every product, from branded drinkware like water bottles and coffee mugs to custom promotional tote bags, is a potent marketing tool to help spread the word about your company’s brand and messaging effectively and efficiently.

From your first contact until after your order ships, we are in contact with you to let you know how everything is working. Trust us to provide you with the full benefits of promotional products for your next event or conference. Contact us for more information.