The Top Ten Reasons Businesses Use Promotional Items

1. Trade Show Promotion
The top reason that companies purchase promotional items is for use in trade show promotions. The categories of items purchased for trade shows run the gamut from inexpensive giveaways to very expensive gifts for executive buyers. The largest volume of trade show sales is in takeaway gifts for exhibition stand visitors.

2. Customer Retention, appreciation
Customer retention and appreciation is the second most cited reason for purchasing promotional items. Gifts to existing customers include everything from free sticky note pads sent out by office supply companies to imprinted sugarless mint tins handed to customers after a tooth cleaning at the dentist. Promotional items are an excellent way to show appreciation to your clients for their custom.


3. Goodwill/ Enhance Image
In the same vein, many companies use promotional items to increase goodwill and enhance their image. A local business may buy promotional items like drink cups to support a youth organization's fund raising event, for instance, or purchase t-shirts for a youth sports league.

4. Improve, Reward or Recognize Employee Performance
Promotional items are powerful motivators employee incentives. Many companies offer incentives to their employees to help reduce the absentee rate, reduce workplace accidents and increase productivity. Among the most popular types of promotional items used as employee motivators are apparel and trophies.

5. Create awareness of New Products/Service/Facilities
Promotional items are one of the best ways to introduce a new product or service to your customers. One of the things that promotional items do extremely well is raise awareness – which is part of the reason that they are so often used by councils and other government agencies to introduce new initiatives and make the public aware of new policies and services.

6. Reinforce Existing Products/Services /Facilities
Promotional items can also be used to increase awareness of existing services and facilities and to encourage their use. They're often used to get existing customers to "upgrade" to a higher level of benefits or order new services from businesses with whom they already do business.

7. Generate Sales Leads and Responses
Nothing generates sales leads as well as the promise of a free gift. Whether you use promotional items as a thank you for referrals, or send a free gift to anyone who responds to a direct mail response postcard, the lead generation potential of promotional items is unparalleled.

8. Fundraising/Increasing Donations of Money, Food, Blood
Non-profit organizations and government agencies often use promotional items as a thank you for giving gift. Because of the wide range of promotional items available, it's very easy for non-profit agencies to tailor promotional campaigns that take advantage of more valuable incentives for higher levels of donations.

9. Open Doors, Secure Appointments
You can't sell if you can't get in the door – it's a truism about sales in general. Offering a gift to prospective customers in return for them listening to your sales pitch is a time honored way to set appointments. Promotional items give you the best value for your marketing budget because you can buy promotional items in bulk, reducing your overhead costs.

10. Motivate Dealers, Retailers
Any industry that relies on retailers and dealers often uses promotional items to motivate their associated dealers to move certain product lines. Automobile manufacturers may offer product incentives to dealers who make high sales in a new model or one that has slow sales, for instance, and breweries may offer promotional merchandise to bars and restaurants for sales in excess of a set amount.