Promotional Products: Your Premier Advertising Medium

When it comes to advertising, there are many mediums in which you can choose to market your company. Taking your budget into consideration and knowing you can only advertise in so many places, marketers typically choose a medium depending on the goal of the advertisement. Promotional products are usually used for target or niche audiences, but what most don’t know is that they are also rated better than TV and newspaper/magazines when it comes to reaching a mass audience.

In a PPAI (Promotional Products Association International) survey, promotional products were ranked against other advertising mediums (TV, direct mail, newspaper/consumer magazines, trade publications, internet, and social media) in terms of their effectiveness with certain marketing attributes. They ranked first in the following attributes:

• Ability to achieve long-term memorability at the cost of paying only for a single exposure
• Flexibility to fit the cost of the medium to whatever budget is available
• Ability to bond the audience and advertiser, promoting repeat business
• Audience friendly (ie not likely to offend or be regarded as a nuisance)
• Ability to generate traffic to the company at stores, trade shows, events, etc.

If this isn’t convincing enough to choose promotional products as a mode of advertising, a 2006 study conducted by LSU and University of Texas-San Antonio found that American consumers viewed an advertising message more credible if it came from a promotional product (53%), as compared to one delivered through TV (33%).

So stop spending your entire advertising budget on a TV ad that will air a handful of times, and may not even reach your target audience. Instead, distribute cost-effective promotional products that your customers will use and remember!