Promotional Merchandise Ideas for the Thrifty

Running on the theme of promotional merchandise of the month, this entry we’re looking at how to make promotional merchandise for the small to medium sized enterprise (SME) that doesn’t have a huge cost to the business. We will show you how you can get a personalized gift that won’t break the bank.

So the goal of promotional merchandise is to get your business’s name out to both potential and existing customers so they think of your business when they have need of services that your business provides. These impressions, as the industry calls it, are what makes the customer pick your business out even when looking at the results from a google search. The problem is unless you’ve got clients worth thousands of dollars or are willing to buy hundreds or thousands of the item, it will be a pricey exercise. This is why most SME aren’t willing to spend money on promotional merchandise. It doesn’t have to be like that. Here’s a few ideas of how to make unique promotional merchandise without having to spend a big amount of money. 

Simple Customisations

Printing on paper and card is the easiest way to come up with unique items, and when business cards are now considered promotional merchandise by many marketing firms why not customize them even further to make them more memorable and useful.  Two examples of customizing business cards that we ourselves have produced are for business to business companies, one with cleaning and sanitary products and other for investigation work. For the first company they use a thick folded business card to look like a normal business card but when open it’s a mixing ratio guide for their concentrates. The second company had ruler measurements on the edges of the card that invoked the rulers used in crime scene photography and could be used as such in a pinch.

Fridge Notepads and calendars are another popular solution for promotional merchandise as they can have a long use life hanging on one of the most frequently used items of a home or business. It doesn’t require a lot of design work either. Just having your business card added to the standard design (which is often a  template for it) will give you a load of impressions you need to keep the business in their minds.

Using ‘Blank’ Products

This is where you start being more creative with your customizing. Let’s look at the ways you can customize a common promotional item, the key chain. You can start as simply as getting the tubs of plastic id tag key chains and replacing the insert with a custom printed one. Is it as fancy as a screen printed or engraved version, no but is a lot cheaper and can be personalized at a low cost. If your a builder putting in something with a lock, or supply equipment with a lock then including one key that has your contact information in a keychain as their ‘master’ is a great way keeping those impressions up and getting repeat custom You can take it a step further further by sourcing a nicer key chain and applying a resin coated sticker which could be applied to anything else you want to give away.

Low Cost Modification Of Existing Items

In the situation where you want something customisable but even lower cost than ‘proper’ promotional merchandise, it’s simple enough to modify an everyday product to give those desired impressions. To cite some more examples to take inspiration from. At a large conference or expo a common action is to hand out packs of sweets or small bottles of water to booth attendees. Getting such things printed can be expensive and require two or more weeks of lead in time. There’s also the cost of transporting them to the location if it’s out of town. A simpler solution would be to just have labels printed with the promotional content and then buy the water or treats locally from a supermarket. You do then have to apply the labels yourself but that can be done before the event, and in the quiet times during it. This is where you can get staff to help you out since you’re paying for the time to be there so you might as well make use of it.

In a more general situation where you want to reward a client or send a gift for their continued custom, pre printed wraps and labels for existing products are great low cost solutions. An on demand printer like us at Copy Express can either custom cut to size or order a specialized pre cut item to give you that professional finish without having to pay for it to be done at the source. We can even do mail merge so every wrap or sticker can have unique content of text and graphics on each one at minimal extra cost.

Another example of what we have done to customize a generic product is that we have taken low cost notepads and then added a cover flap on to them with the clients marketing material. It’s the cost of a creased flier plus the labor of assembling it (which the client could have saved even more doing the assembly themselves.) Our sister company Fuel Accountants use motorsports as their ‘theme’ so when they onboard a new client with their starting pack, it’s shipped in a toolbox with the Fuel Accountants logo as stickers applied to it.

Using Copy Shops, Photo Labs and Shopping Center Kiosks

These places sit in the middle ground between doing it yourself and going to a specialist promotional merchandise company. It boils down to the volume needed to be done. If it’s only five, ten, twenty of an item, these smaller businesses are often cheaper than going to the specialist as they tailor their prices to fit the smaller volume of orders. Most of these products are either inkjet printed or thermally printed so the personalisation will wear off in a couple of years, but by then you’ve received repeat custom from the client from the hundreds of impressions it’s given.

Using Online Printing On Demand Services

Fitting within the same space as the previous examples there are many online printing firms that also have small batch promotional merchandise production. Pick the item and the colour options, upload the graphics, write the text, and pay at the checkout. Simple and letting you order only a few of what you need for a reasonable price. While they do have the same shorter usable life as found with the previous option, the main issue is the time frame and limited quality control. To keep prices down, they combine several customers’ orders into one run to reduce setup costs. Also these types of companies only do runs of various products on a more infrequent basis, once a week or every few weeks instead of daily. (It must be said the timeframe is often no longer than going to a specialist promotional merchandise company.) Another issue is that a lot of these businesses will only exercise a minimum of quality control so if you upload a low resolution image or have a typo in your text, they may still go ahead with printing it as you’ve said that it was correct when you confirmed the order with them. Lastly they are most cost effective at smaller volumes, larger quantities are lower cost from the specialist merchandising companies.

Low Cost Bespoke Items

If you want something more unique, look at getting items engraved, CNC, laser cut, or 3D printed. Not only can you go to trophies engraver but there are many independent specialists who can cut, mill, or print. Starting with your business name and logo they can create a lot of different options using either existing products or creating something from scratch. Examples include engraving onto glassware, laser cutting a logo as a keychain from plywood, or 3d printing a handy desk item. There’s a huge range of existing designs that can be accessed for free from online libraries,  and with the help of the specialist can be customized to represent your business to the recipient.

Contact Local Artists

This is not as silly as it might sound. Many artists will take on commission work, and many types of art are easily scaled up for low volume production. A classic example is potters making mugs or bowls, where they can use a stencil to put a company logo on the glaze or use molded stamps to emboss it. Woodworkers can use a branding iron to do the same logo marking. Even giving more traditional art can be a good merchandising idea as long as it has visible links back to your business.

Making It Yourself

Sometimes making it yourself is even more effective than buying a commercial product as it has the personal touch. Depending on the business you are in, the work and cost involved is minimal or making use of already paid for expenses. With some planning and forethought it can even be part of normal activities so there is little disruption of the business activities.  Many businesses have down times and if you’re paying for staff but they have nothing to do. Putting them to work making small promotional items will make use of those already paid for hours. But what could you make? Here’s a few example ideas

• A restaurant features unique sauce or spices. They make some extra sample batches of that coating and give them away as gifts. (And perhaps have them in large volume to buy as a side line.)
• A builder takes offcuts of lumber to turn into things like bookends, chopping boards, desk accessories.
• A beauty salon makes up packs of sample products they can get from their suppliers and provides it in a personalized gift pack.
• A child care center makes up activity packs for when the children are on holidays using the material they use for activities during normal business.

Is this a promotional merchandise solution for your business? For more services oriented industries, where you’re selling your time and expertise, then more traditional products are going to be the only option. For the SME who could make it themselves, it’s a decision between the cost of time and materials to create promotional merchandise, and getting the ready made solution. It’s not a solution that can be done at large scale, but for small volumes it could prove to be very cost effective. 

In Conclusion

Promotional merchandise is one of the many tools available to a SME to help keep their business in the mind of existing customers and to associate it with that business in potential customers. Like all marketing tools there is a cost to doing it, and there is no guarantee that it will make an obvious difference in your overall revenue. In this sort of situation we would always recommend treating it as a ‘write off’ cost, where the money spent is overall business development, not pure revenue generation. As a SME owner you will have to make the judgment if this is affordable for you. By exploring the lower cost ideas and options covered in this article, you can afford to explore this marketing method to see if it’s right for your business.

Want to explore the idea of promotional merchandise but don’t know where to start? Looking for advice for what ideas are the best fit for your business? Need someone to manage the whole process so you only have to collect the finished items? Talk to us at Copy Express and we will be glad to help you.