Branding With Promotional Products - By: Gareth Parkin

Branding can be quite powerful. Most new businesses fail within their first five years, and in many cases, the reason is because the product or services was not branded. When no thought goes into branding, your customers can’t pick you out in a crowd. One of the easiest ways to help brand your company is to use promotional products.
What is branding anyway? Simply put, branding is setting your products or service apart from others within the industry. It’s the way you create certain thoughts and feelings in a consumer when you say your company name. For example, McDonald’s has been branded to be a happy place catering to families. Recently, they’ve also begun branding McDonald’s to have healthier fast food options, especially for children. With their various ad campaigns, product choices, etc., McDonald’s hopes to be the first place brought to mind when someone wants fast food. Branding also means a recognizable logo (the arches) and even colors (red and yellow).
Of course, not everyone can spend millions of dollars branding their business like McDonald’s does! Promotional products and promotional items are a great way to help this branding because they are affordable and fun. If you want to brand your company in a way in which to show consumers that you are fun-loving, you might use promotional products that make noise, contain lights, and change colors. On the other hand, if you want to convey an image of being practical, promotional mugs, promotional pens, and other such products can help you.
No matter what specific products you choose, remember that uniformity is key in branding. In other words, take your logo and past use it on everything. This is not the time to be creative. If your company headquarters has a purple sign, make purple key rings. If you use the slogan “Your one-stop shop” in your radio advertisements, print this same logo on your pencils.
After all, there are probably at least 10 other businesses competing with yours. You want certain colors, logos, fonts, slogans, and so forth to be unique to your company—and you want consumers to identify these things with you. That’s what branding is all about. By using promotional products to reinforce your design choices, you can build your branding efforts.
Also note the promotional products and business gifts can go where you cannot. You can’t always travel the country with your products, but you can send an employee armed with promotional products to conventions and fairs around the world. Customers who normally would not think about your business will soon be calling your for shipments, simply because the promotional products you’ve released have reached them. Branding is so powerful that you may find people begin simply to refer to you by your branding techniques. For example, if I said I was looking for some golden arches, you would probably assume I meant McDonald’s! Use promotional products to have the same effect in your community. Branding is an important aspect of any business marketing and promotional products and corporate gifts can help.
For additional information on adverting promotional products, promotional items and business gifts check out the leading promotional gift suppliers online today!