As an Event Manager, do you think that the only events you should be attending are tradeshows? Well, we’ve got news for you. The more that you expand your vision, the more that your demographic (and business) will grow. If you are in the field of technology, get it out of your head that you can only attend IT conferences. From sporting events to concerts to street fairs, the limit of your brand’s reach is up to you. Whatever event you choose to attend, be sure to arrive prepared not only to mingle, but to make a strong connection with potential clients. In this article, we will discuss how using event merchandise will translate into gaining loyal consumers.
No matter which way you spin it, people love free stuff.
How often do you see people turn away free samples of food at your local market? How many times have you seen people go crazy for a free t-shirt at an event? Look at your collection of pens; we bet not many are store-bought. A free product is one of the easiest ways to get a person’s attention. However, we want to show you how to use that initial interest and successfully convert it into revenue.
Which events should you attend?
The first step is to choose your event wisely. Think about your current demographic and how you could expand it. Delve deeper into different age groups, ethnicities, and interest groups. For example, say you run a craft brewery. However, you are only drawing in broke, post-college graduates who come in specifically for your happy hour. Sure, you value your current clientele. Nonetheless, you realise that you, too, might be living in your mother’s basement if you don’t bring in higher paying clients.
Think about what kind of people you’d like to add to your clientele. What do they do for a living? Where do they hang out? What are their favourite activities? As the owner of the craft brewery, you may want to make an appearance some golf tournaments. Pay a visit to your local casinos or rent a booth at the next car show. Choosing the right events to attend is crucial. However, it is only part of the equation. Knowing the keys of using promotional merchandise at events will make your investment worthwhile.
How do you determine which promotional products to use?
When choosing the merchandise to pass out, don’t take the easy road. Skip what everyone else in your field is handing out. Unless you’re trying to attract writers, don’t bother with pens. Use your creativity to stand out as much as possible; design a quality product that people will actually use. In the instance of the craft brewery, a beer bottle opener, an eye-catching t-shirt, or a schooner glass would all work seamlessly as promotional merchandise. Why? Well, people who drink beer would actively use all three items. Each time they do, they will think of the brand that was so generous with them. When you are giving, it’s very likely that this act will be reciprocated – in the form of purchasing your products. This is how loyal consumers are born.
At Red Tomato, we are here to help you successfully grow your business, no matter if you’re a veteran or in the process of creating a start-up. If you would like to discuss ideas about which events or promotional products are right for you, please let us know! We will work side-by-side with you, helping you create the perfect alchemy of investment, creativity, and increased revenue. You will be amazed at how using promotional merchandise at events can lead to life-long clients, who in turn will very likely bring in referrals.
Are you ready to start planning your next event? Download your Free Event Planning Checklist and make your life easier.
January 31, 2018- Red Tomato is proud to be recently awarded the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) Silver Pyramid Award in Las Vegas. They were named the Silver Pyramid Award for their work with Country Racing Victoria (CRV) Kids Program.
CRV hosts race meets across Victoria to engage race goers in rural locations. The Kids Activity Pack encouraged early registration and helped engage children during and after the event to show winning isn’t everything.
“CRV in conjunction with Red Tomato has created a incredibly strong property with the Kids Summer of Country Racing Backpack. The campaign had an increase of 5% in attendance and 9% in gate revenue. The success of this campaign has established an excellent foundation for the campaign to leverage into the new racing season. On the back of this success, next year’s campaign will be bigger and better with a new and improved kids backpack to be used as a means to incentivise patrons to come to the country races.” Darren Galley – CRV Marketing and Business Development Manager
“Red Tomato is proud to have forged such a strong partnership with Country Racing Victoria. The team here put a lot of time and thought into the selection of products that will help achieve CRV’s outcomes.” Justin Reynolds – Managing Director
The PPAI Awards and Recognition Program celebrates creative excellence throughout the promotional products industry. The awards recognize everything from Distinguished Service and Hall of Fame careers to great websites, outstanding customer service and everything in between.
Just as you wouldn’t enlist your grandpa to teach you how to use the newest drone, you wouldn’t want to rely on outdated strategies to launch your company’s next campaign. We are living in the age of information, where technology and business practices are evolving faster than we blink. Common household items like landlines and physical newspapers are becoming obsolete. Meanwhile, robots tend to five-star hotels and hold complex conversations. As Bob Dylan prophesied, the times they are a’ changing, and “you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone.” As such, it is important to discuss old vs. new marketing strategies. Whether you are a Marketing Manager or have run your own business since 1985, you’d better reconcile your nostalgia with cutting edge practices.
Old Marketing Strategies
Back in the days, the travelling salesman was a respected profession. Some bloke would load up a bunch of books, vacuums, or cutlery into his car. He’d head out for a full day of knocking on strangers’ doors, ready to blindly pitch his way into a paycheck. Companies primarily based old marketing on pushing products onto anyone they could reach. It didn’t matter if it was through tv commercials, full-page newspaper ads, or sharky shop salespeople. Because companies didn’t necessarily take client demographics into consideration, everyone was a potential customer. As such, they sent out the message as loudly and widely as possible.
Pushing out products to the masses, or outbound marketing, had its serious downfalls. Not only did people feel pressured to buy unnecessary items, but businesses also wasted a great deal of time and money peddling unwanted products. Conversion rates were low, and consequently, the CPP (cost per person) of each sale was high.
New Marketing Strategies
With the emergence of the internet and the motto of “work smarter, not harder,” things started changing. Companies figured out that there had to be a better way to get clients. Hence the creation of inbound marketing, which was designed to attract the clients to the company. With websites, blogs, and social media channels, the mouse was now in charge of knocking on the cat’s door. Inbound marketing makes the client more comfortable and is also much more calculated, and therefore effective. With Google Analytics and other forms of data analysis, companies can easily find out who their ideal clients are. By honing into those demographics and creating buyer personas, they ensure that they’re not advertising encyclopedias to YouTube fanatics.
How Promotional Products Provide an Integrated Approach
Perhaps you’re ready to embrace new marketing strategies but still have your reservations. After all, strategies like email marketing are still effective when done properly. Thankfully, there is a way to reconcile the old with the new. Promotional merchandise is a perfect way to use inbound and outbound marketing tactics together. People love to receive free stuff, so why not use promotional products as an incentive? For example, you give a potential client the latest style of coffee mug she’s been wanting. Now, every time she serves a cup of joe, your logo will remind her of how awesome your company is. With your website imprinted on that merch, you have merged old vs. new marketing. This is a very effective way of moving prospects through your marketing funnel faster and turn them into paying customers. Get ready for the best results ever.
What is your position on old vs. new marketing strategies? Have you found a way to successfully reconcile these practices? Let us know your experiences in the comments below!
A promotional products agency can help you strategise and execute campaigns to generate qualified leads and turn them into sales.
Generating sales is all about making a personal connection. Marketing efforts need to be extremely personal, communicating your message with the specific individual to whom you want to sell. This is why it’s important in your marketing campaigns to focus on quality over quantity. Decreasing your cost per lead to the lowest possible requires careful planning and research.
Using promotional products to generate sales
How is a branded pen or mug going to help you hit your revenue goals? Well, 85% of people have done business after receiving a promotional product. However, not all promotional product campaigns are created equal, nor is every promotional products agency. Before you go and spend your entire marketing budget on a branded product campaign, it’s important to do your research.
Who is your target customer? What are you trying to sell to them? What’s your messaging, what pain point are you solving for them? At what point are they making decisions about purchasing?
After conducting thorough research and answering these questions, you can begin planning your campaign.
The most common reason people keep a promotional product is because they find it useful. Your target customer will keep your product on their desk, in their home, and use it every day all while having your brand in mind. Therefore, it’s important to have a promotional product that is useful to your customer while also making your brand’s messaging stick.
The usefulness of a product and its timing go hand-in-hand. Make sure your promotional product lands in the hands of your target customer at the perfect moment and your chances of recollection will increase.
How a promotional products agency can help you reach your sales goals
Creating and executing perfectly-timed, strategic promotional products campaign is an art form. Choosing the product and its design are just the first step. Timing, distribution, follow-up channels, messaging, and integrating your sales funnel all need to be included in your campaign. This is where a promotional products agency comes in.
As you know, marketing efforts need to be mixed in order to be effective. In a world of digital-overload for customers, a knock-out social media campaign is great, but its results are doubled when strategically paired with a branded product campaign. A promotional products agency will work with your existing marketing efforts to catalyze a sense of connection and loyalty to your brand.
An example of this is how O’Brien Real Estate enlisted our promotional products agency to attract more auctions for their AFL Finals Promotions. By combining a strategic product (branded footballs), strong timing (around the AFL Finals), and social media, they were able to generate more auctions and a larger audience for their seasonal promotions.
A promotional product agency will help you implement a strategic campaign; generating brand loyalty and catalyse your sales funnel to hit your revenue goals.
As a marketing manager, you surely know the importance of using emails as a crucial part of your marketing strategy. Emails are a great way to stay in touch with your loyal consumers, as well as reach out to those who are considering your services. It’s an essential part of marketing. However, adding promotional marketing into your emails can help you achieve higher conversion rates. This allows you to accomplish two things in one email, and who doesn’t want that? Read on to find out how to use promotional marketing in marketing automation.
The benefits of promotional marketing
Promotional marketing is a concept that some people may be on the fence about, since they fear they’re paying to give away merchandise for free. However, as we have discussed before, this is an excellent way to turn would-be clients into loyal customers. When adding promotional products to other media, it increases the effectiveness by 44%. Promotional marketing is very cost-effective, influential way to market your brand and increase your ROI. So, why not add this into your marketing automation and engage more people?
Before you begin to think that this process seems too complicated, or you’re hesitant to add another step to your email marketing campaigns, consider the following: People love free stuff. People are also inundated with hundreds of emails daily from companies wanting their attention. Whether their angle is providing information in the form of a newsletter, offering discounts on products, or an update on your company’s latest, most of these emails are ignored.
Why? Because, unless there’s something tangible in the email, it’s mainly a large waste of time for the consumer. However, if you offer a free promotional product, you’ve hooked in your potential client, and chances are that your call to action will be effective. And with the right product, the consumer will be happy. Happy consumers often become loyal clients, and that should make you happy (and successful!) in return.
Implementing promotional marketing in marketing automation systems
So, how do you go about integrating promotional marketing in marketing automation? First off, make sure that you’re doing email marketing effectively. You need to appeal to the right people with the content and products that will suit them. Make sure that you have a CRM tool that can help you analyze your demographic, and use that information to your advantage. Secondly, make sure that this tool works seamlessly with your email service provider – whether it be MailChimp or one of these equally stellar alternatives.
The last step to completing a successful promotional marketing campaign within your automated marketing system is also the most fun. Check out the wide array of merchandise in our boutique shops and select the perfect customisable products for your consumers. Then, it’s time to plan your campaign! As always, we are here to assist you every step of the way.
Why Red Tomato is right for you
At Red Tomato, we’re more than just a promotional marketing agency. We also provide integrated marketing solutions and want to keep you up to date on the newest technologies that will help your business thrive. If you need any assistance or further information on promotional marketing in marketing automation, please let us know. We are here for you and are more than happy to help with any questions you may have.
Have you used promotional marketing within your marketing automation? What was your experience? Please share in the comments below!
1300 776 733
hi@redtomato.com.au 
