As with any brand activation, preparing your brand for an event requires a lot of little pieces coming together. Making sure brand ambassadors are prepared, creating beautiful displays, purchasing event merchandise are just a few. Here is a complete event checklist for activating your brand and making sure those pieces fit together seamlessly.
Understand your buyer persona
Your buyer persona needs to be at the center of any marketing efforts your company is investing in. However, your buyer personas are especially important in brand activations. That is why it is the number one point on our events checklist.
Why is it so important? In order to prepare your brand for an event, you need to know who exactly you’re targeting. What are their pain points? Challenges? Why are they at the event? How is your brand going to solve their problem? Knowing your target audience before going to an event will help you tremendously in resonating with potential customers at an event.
Second on our events checklist is brand consistency.This doesn’t just mean making sure your colors are the same in the images you post on Facebook and on Twitter. Brand consistency means having consistent messages, tone, solutions, look, feel, and yes, colors and logos, throughout all mediums – on and offline.
Checking off brand consistency on your events checklist is essential for your brand activation. It makes sure your potential customer won’t get confused. All elements of your brand, including tone, messaging, look and feel, should be the same on your website as they are at an event. You want a lead from an event to turn into a customer post-event. How will that happen if they go to your website and the messaging is different than what your employees expressed to them in person at an event?
Don’t forget to refer to your brand style guide!
Sharing your company’s brand style guide with your events team will ensure that company ambassadors portray your brand consistently throughout all mediums.
When your entire team has a copy of the branding guidelines, it’s more likely that your company will be communicated in a consistent manner across all channels. People who received your company business card at an event will see the same branding on the website they visit when they’re back in the office.
Make sure your signage displays a clear message
Who is your target audience at this event and what issue are you trying to solve for them? Those are the two most important items that should be communicated by your event space. Your company’s signage should be easy to read, consistent with your brand, resonate with your buyer persona, and answer those two questions.
Have consistent uniforms that tell your brand story
Your brand ambassadors uniforms will contribute to brand consistency and will aid in telling your brand’s story to potential customers. This takes us back to the buyer personas (we told you they’d be at the center our events checklist!).
What type of uniform will connect best with your buyer persona? A more professional uniform? A playful, laid back uniform? Does your target client work in a startup and prefer a more Zuckerburg-grey-tee-and-blue-jean look?
Hand out giveaways that keep your brand top-of-mind long after the event ends
Customers that receive a branded gift from a company are more than 85% percent likely to do business with that same company. Handing out a promotional product at an event brings your brand home. A giveaway that is relevant, useful, and timely is more likely to turn a lead into a customer.
Are you struggling to stand out from the crowd with your merchandise? We understand that it can be challenging to make your products something that your client will want to use and even harder to provide a product that they’ll cherish. That’s why we want to introduce you to our latest post in our decoration series: embossing and debossing.
It’s a decoration technique which has been appearing daily on our Instagram pages and we love it. We’ve seen brands materialise as a result of this trend, such as mon purse which specialises in monogramming items for gifts and personal pleasures. If it’s worthy of the Instagram elite – your clients should experience it too. We’re going to talk you through the difference between debossing and embossing. We’ll then suggest how to use it to decorate your promotional products.
What’s the difference between embossing and debossing?
Debossing is the action of going deep or depressing into a surface. It’s stamping a logo, initials or other artwork into a soft material. This is done by using a metal die to stamp onto the top of a product. Keep in mind, if you want to get the same effect on something made of metal or plastic you’ll have to laser engrave or having some custom moulded.
Embossing is the opposite of a deboss. It’s raising a material to create a 3D effect in the shape of your logo. It works in the same way as a deboss, however, the metal die is stamped from underneath instead of on top.
When should you emboss or deboss?
Debossing or embossing is great for when you want to spoil your staff members, event guests or clients with something extra special. Imagine the feeling they’ll get sitting down to a table at an event dinner and instead of a plain travel wallet with your logo on it – it had their initials debossed onto it neatly in the corner with your logo stamped on the back. What a treasured gift that would be!
Keep in mind, it is a little bit more costly to personalise your products so keep this up your sleeve for extra special events. It’s also a great idea for your HR team to help with staff retention by making your staff feel extra special with a personalised gift.
Variations
There are two ways you can emboss or deboss a product. Number one is to do a blind emboss or deboss. This simply means it’s not foiled or covered and will remain the same colour of the product, i.e. a tone on tone effect.
The second is to get the deboss foiled. You can fill it in with metallic or coloured foil which will make it stand out a lot more. This will not work for an emboss, as you need an empty crevis for the foil to stay put.
When can you emboss a promotional product?
Embossing and debossing works really well on leather, soft plastics such as PU and various card stocks. This decoration technique works best with logos that have minimal detail.
We hope you’ve inspired you to try this technique with your next promotional product. It’s a great way to make your clients or staff feel extra special. If you want more ideas on using promotional merchandise to make an impact, have a read of this.
Picture this: You’re flying out to Perth this Christmas to meet your girlfriend’s mother for the first time. Obviously, you need to bring her a gift. You could just settle for a generic basket of fruity lotions or a Myers gift card. However, you want to make a lasting impression, so you decide to dig deeper. What are your future mother-in-law’s (fingers crossed!) hobbies? What is she passionate about? In order to win her over, you need to find that perfect gift that she would have picked out herself. If you think about it, your girlfriend’s mother isn’t much different than your clients. In this article, we will show you the importance of understanding buyer personas to select promotional merchandise.
What are buyer personas, anyway?
We’re sure you’re familiar with what a buyer persona is, but just in case, it is described as follows: “Buyer personas (sometimes referred to as marketing personas) are fictional, generalised representations of your ideal customers. Personas help us… internalise the ideal customer we’re trying to attract, and relate to our customers as real humans. Having a deep understanding of your buyer persona(s) is critical to driving content creation, product development, sales follow up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention.” (Pamela Vaughan, 2015) Establishing buyer personas is crucial in determining what your promotional merchandise should be selected.
How, exactly, should you determine your buyer personas? While demographics such as age, sex, and ethnicity can be helpful, they are not the end-all. You need to dig deeper and discover what really makes your (present and future) clients tick. What are their motivations? What do they value, need, and desire?
How can you determine your unique buyer personas?
In order to reveal your buyer personas, you can send out a survey with questions similar to those above. Analyse your data to see who is visiting your social media channels and your website to glimpse what they are looking for. Another way is to use our straightforward Buyer Persona Template, which can be found in our toolbox.
The ideal client persona will be someone who has a high potential for brand loyalty and are likely not only to become return customers but also to refer your service to others. Once you have established who these personas are, and pinpointed their interests, you will be much better equipped to address their needs. In your marketing campaigns, you will be able to assist their professional goals by providing useful content based on their interests. In addition, by knowing who you are reaching out to, you can improve communication by adapting your tone. For instance, you would write an email to a CEO much differently than a millennial Event Manager. Use this buyer persona knowledge to your advantage.
What does this have to do with promotional merchandise?
Once you know your demographic well and have selected the buyer persona you’d like to target, you have access to the full potential of promotional products. The successful business owner with an affinity for sports would make a perfect candidate for golf balls. The digital nomad in their 20s or 30s would definitely carry around the Stark Tech Computer Backpack. Or the jet-setting businesswoman who’s always looking for unique souvenirs would love to bring some Kangaroo Chocolates home to her British friends.
No matter which promotional products you choose to give away, be sure that it caters directly to your ideal buyer persona. Not only will they feel understood, they will also proudly don that sweatshirt (with your logo on it) for all to see. Mission accomplished!
Have any questions about buyer personas or selecting the perfect promotional merchandise? Let us know!
If you’re in the marketing world, you know that ROI is not just a convenient acronym. BRB, OMG, and LOL (amongst others) could never pull the weight that ROI does, and with good reason. When your business depends on your Return on Investment (ROI), this becomes a very serious matter. Promotional merchandise is a no-brainer when you’re growing your brand: it’s cost-effective, improves customer engagement, and boosts brand awareness. What’s best is that the use of promotional products is tangibly measurable. In this article, we’ll explore how to measure ROI with promotional merchandise.
Benefits of Promotional Merchandise
We know that there are various avenues of marketing nowadays– from radio ads to social media promotion. Nonetheless, promotional merchandise continues to be an effective way to reach a wide audience. Most people keep promotional products and use them quite frequently. This doesn’t just remind clients of your services. It’s been found that one in three people are more likely to do business with a company after they’ve received a branded gift. In addition, your exposure will multiply if you’re using merchandise like reusable bags or branded t-shirts that will be used frequently in public.
Choosing the Best Product for ROI
At Red Tomato, we understand that, as a Marketer, it’s crucial to measure your success. Your marketing campaign can’t be a haphazard, blind investment. Your strategy needs to have a tangible, quantifiable endgame. As Andy Cohen, of the Advertising Specialty Institute, stated, “Ultimately, the return on investment that clients receive from using promotional products in their marketing campaigns can be found in the fact that the items have an extremely low cost-per-impression (CPI).” In other words, your choice of product needs to be wisely calculated. You may want to impress your clients with an expensive bottle of wine or the shiniest new tech gadget, but you may end up spending too much money on something that your client will never use.
How, then are you to choose the best product for your ROI? After all, you are looking to build positive brand associations with your clients. Sending them cheap or useless products with your logo on it, just to lower your CPI, will only prove that you’re cheap and thoughtless. At Red Tomato, we will brainstorm what kind of product is related to your business, useful, and will provide high visibility. Talkdesk’s Shauna Geraghty suggests, “The perfect promotional item with the largest ROI will inevitably be one that takes into account brand messaging, costs constraints and customer interest equally to make the appropriate product decision.”
How to Measure ROI with Promotional Merchandise
After you’ve chosen and distributed the perfect promotional merchandise, it’s important to measure how successful your campaign has been. This is where ROI comes in. A simplified way of calculating ROI would be to take the amount you’ve earned from the campaign and subtract the amount you spent on the product, shipping, trade show costs, and so on. However, with promotional merchandise, this measurement can be a bit more complex, due to factors such as reach and quantifiable purchases. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about complicated math equations anymore. We’ve taken the time to create an ROI Calculator specifically for promotional merchandise products to help you measure your success. Be sure to take a look and use it for your next marketing campaign!
Do you have any questions about how to measure ROI with promotional merchandise? What products have been the most successful for your ROI? Please share in the comments below!
Father’s Day is your once-a-year chance to show Dad how much he means to you. Father figures have a lot of influence in the way we shape our lives and Father’s Day is a good prompt to thank them. It’s also a great excuse to run a fun, creative marketing campaign! We’ve created this blog article to elaborate on our top 3 tips for a great Father’s Day promotion – we hope you love the ideas as much as we do.
1. Use the power of social media
If you’re a marketer, you’ll know that social media can really boost your marketing campaigns. There are a couple of ways you can harness this epic power. Firstly, run a competition! Advertise your product and give all participants the opportunity to win an amazing prize (a promotional merchandise pack, gift voucher or just some cash) if they post a photo using your product or share and tag a particular photo with their friends list. This is a great way to boost your brand presence and also grow your social media following. Using a timely excuse like Father’s Day is a great reason for people to enjoy participating.
Secondly, you can use Father’s Day as a theme for social media posts for a week or even a month. Creating content for social media can be hard sometimes – it’s often tough to find relevant content to contribute to your channels. By using Father’s Day as a theme you won’t be short of great content to post.
Gifts with purchase
What motivates people more to make a purchase than… a free gift? (How many times have you spent an extra $100 at Estee Lauder so you can get that goodie bag? Guilty!)
We’ve thought of a few Father’s Day gift ideas using promotional merchandise that we think would be the perfect incentive to get your clients to buy or invest in your business, just so they can get that gift!
1. T-shirts
Printed t-shirts. We’re not talking about a t-shirt with your logo slapped right in the center that no one outside your company is likely to wear (unless you’re Deux Ex Machina). Why not print t-shirts with 5 reasons why you love Dad? Or your best Dad joke? Of course, include your logo – but put it in a more elegant position such as the bottom corner or the back yoke.
2. A funny giveaway
Promotional merchandise giveaways with a bit of kick is a great way to engage your clients. Something as simple as a stress ball can be so effective for timely events such as Father’s Day! Because when do we not stress our Dads out?
3. Make it relatable
We’ve discussed Father’s Day themed gifts. If you want to purchase a larger amount of merchandise that will last beyond Father’s Day. Choose a gift that directly relates to your product. If you’re selling shovels and gardening supplies – you wouldn’t give a toiletry bag or a towel away, it just doesn’t make sense. Perhaps a branded tin pot or a pair of gardening gloves. This will be much more appealing to your clientele.
Use Father’s Day as an excuse to surprise your staff
91% of Dads are an active part of Australia’s work force – does this number scale out in your office? Due to there being such a large volume of Father’s in the work industry it’s a perfect excuse to put together some gifts for the office Dads. We’ve talked about using merchandise as a way to encourage staff retention. Why not put together a “Dad survival kit” not only will you get a laugh out of it, your Dads are sure to love it! You can even do one for Father’s of fur babies!
We hope you’ve learnt some new ways to tie in timely events, such as Father’s Day and add a bit of creative flair to your marketing plans this quarter. Want some more ideas? Click here to get help with planning a campaign.
Guilty!)
