What do Promotional Products really cost you!

In November 2008, the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) concluded from their surveys taking early in the year that the average cost-per-impression of Promotional Products is…. $0.004 .

By comparison, a Prime Time TV ad, which is 5 times more expensive, has a cost-per-impression of $0.019 according to the Nielsen Company

The ASI interviewed 465 business people in several major US cities and also did an additional 213 web based interviews. They primarily wanted to analyze the cost-per-impression of various promotional items but the study also gives data on ROI as well.

Here are the highlights of the findings:

– 84% of the survey's respondents, who had received a promotional product within the last 12 months, remembered the advertisers of the promotional products they received.

– 42% of the respondents had a more favorable impression of the advertiser, and 24% said they were more likely to do business with the advertiser.

– In fact, most respondents (62%) had done business with advertiser after receiving the promotional item. 

– Promotional pens are the most recalled advertising specialty item, followed by custom imprinted shirts, caps and bags.

– Printed bags were reported to be most frequently used by the respondents. Promotional Bags had an average of 1,038 impressions per month.

– 81% of the promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.

– 75% of the respondents had had their promotional items for more than 6 months.

–Overall, the average cost-per-impression of the advertising specialty item was $0.004, and marketers get the most favorably return on investment compared to several other popular advertising media.

Here's a pdf of the Advertising Specialty Institute's impression study if you'd like to read it:

Download ASI impression study

Anchor Marketing™

Anchor Marketing™ is a new, fresh and insightful  conceptualization for effective promotional marketing today. 

It was created by  Mike Beckman, a colleague of mine and the principal at Proforma BPM.  Mike has won the PEAK Award for his creative promotions and, most importantly, the loyalty of his clients.

 Mike is currently writing the book but excerpts of his marketing system are currently available on his marketing Ideas blog.

Here's a short introduction to Anchor Marketing™ :
        "Anchoring a message is like painting
with words, allowing those that read and hear your marketing to
associate it with a visual image.  This is more powerful and allows your target to derive more meaning than just glazing over text with no link or association…"

V-Mag e-publications reached 6.8 million visits in 165 Countries

 

I’m a little late in displaying these statistics from May.

The chart above shows that in May alone the number of online visitors to publications that had been converted to digital V-mags grew exponential to 6.8 million.  On average that’s 1,814,400 page views per day for the month.

  In terms of rate, that is approximately 21 page flips per second.

What is a V-mag?
In short, it’s an interactive digital publication that enables you to capture readers statistics, embed flash, video, forms and links. It’s e-publishing with intelligence.

 Here’s a link to our v-mag e-brochure…which itself is a v-mag.

Fine Graphics: Feather Painting

Something completely different: single feathers of birds finely painted. Extraordinarily elegant graphics.

The artist that does this feather painting is Julie Thompson. You can see more of Julie's work at: www.featherlady.net

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New Styles of Promotional Tumblers

I put together a slide show displaying several styles of Promotional tumblers… mostly stainless steel but also a few new acrylic. Enjoy!

Please use the forward arrow below to click through individual slides.

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Incentive Case study: “Now that’s sweet music”

A recent article by the MarketingSherpa describes  a case study in which an HR firm successfully converted 20% more B to B prospects to face-to-face meetings than in previous attempts.

And, so far, the promotional marketing campaign paid for itself 10 times over.

Promotional incentives were primarily instrumental in the firms success, but the campaign was an integrated approach that also  included direct mail marketing, email marketing, and personalized URL’s.

To download and read the entire case study, click below:

Download marketingsherpa__how_to_incentivize_top_prospects__7_steps_to_lift_conversions_20.pdf

The Nike Golf Gift Card

Earlier, in March, I wrote about a golf gift card program that offers all manner of pro brand golf stuff, but if you’re customers, employees or clients are, in particular, Nike fans, there is a gift card just for Nike’s entire premium line of golf products. This program works the same way: the cards come in several dollar denominations,  products are redeemed via a website etc.

V-mags: e-publishing solution for promotional print

V-mags is an online publishing solution that transforms PDF’s of catalogs, brochures, manuals, reports and magazines  into dynamic, interactive and user friendly presentations. Perhaps its most powerful benefit is that it enables you to measure your publications performance.

Behind the scenes, the V-Mag technology measures where you publication achieves.
Just about every mouse click your reader makes is registered. Your provided with feedback and statistic that can tell you what they read, how often and
where in your publication they look, for how long etc. V-Mags
statistics gives you the ability to use the documented information in a
proactive way to enhance your future publications according to your
readers. Or, pass on the live statistics to advertisers, so they can see the results.

It’s a tool that we now provide our client’s who would want, in addition to any printed version of their promotional material and marketing collateral,  the means to distribute a digital online versions that adds interactivity such as links, video, sound, forms, coupons, surveys etc. 

Here’s an illustration of how the process works, from PDF to interactive publication:

Here’s an example. Take a look at a Vmag:   Our Vmag e-brochure

If you email me a pdf, I’ll transform it into a vmag and send it back to you.

Golf Gift Card Program

This is a gift card program specifically for Pro brand name golf items and apparel you can use to give to attendees at a corporate golf event or as an incentive to reward employees. In fact,  We use as it as an incentive or as a  "thank you"  for our clients sometimes, if they like golf, because it is so flexible and easy. 

The Gift cards come in different value denominations from $50, $75, $100, $250. 

There’s no minimum requirement , so if you only need 1 gift card you can purchase just 1 at a time.

To redeem the golf items, you just log onto a website, pick something and it’s dropped shipped to you. If you have a question, there’s a toll-free number to call to get customer service.

The cards can be branded with your logo,  the items can be custom imprinted, and the redemption website can be customized.

Laser decorated Apparel

This is how it’s done:  A multi-head embroidery machine is fitted with an in-line bridge laser system so that the garment’s fabric can be intricately burned and etched.

Sounds a bit painful, too… like tattooing. But, you won’t feel a thing.

What this is… is a laser technology that now adds a lot of flexibility, creativity and…pizazz to custom decorating Fleece, Denim, Micro-suede and Polyester apparel.

In the slide show below, I show a few examples of different styles of laser decoration.  Please use the forward arrow to walk through each slide. I apologize if the images are a bit fuzzy, but they are low resolution.

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