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.
Only those who manage big companies understand the struggles that come with it. If you have had to deal with tight deadlines, demanding budgets, and shipping of your products. You know that not everything goes as planned. As the company grows, you will acquire more responsibilities. This also means you should leave fewer things to chance. One of the most important assets your company can have is its branding. Whether it’s for presentations or external sales, you know that it has to be controlled, standardised and centralised in order to grant consistency in your merchandise. If you’re starting to struggle with these aspects of your business, maybe it’s a sign you should consider opening up a company store and partner up with a Promotional Products Agency. Whichever you decide to go for, online or physical, we’d like to share some of its advantages with you:
Your branding remains top quality
The solutions you have at hand should be growing at the same pace as your company; before things get out of hand you might like to consider outsourcing to a promotional products agency. This way, your logo and everything that revolves around your brand will be produced with the best quality. Your brand deserves the respect and treatment that your company has. Let only professionals handle it. We have dedicated our life to merchandising, and it will definitely pay for itself in the future.
It saves money
Having an online company store makes managing the inventory much easier and cost-friendly. You can regulate the number of items produced to match customised demands or the amount of customers that can have access to your stock. This will not only decrease production costs. It’ll also lower expenses and allow single items purchase without generating extra costs.
It saves time
Time is money. Waiting long periods of time to have your merchandise delivered can affect the performance of your company overall. The average time for customised production of merchandise can take up to 10 business days depending on where you are. While products that are stocked within your company’s store can take up to 24 hours to ship.
Always prepared
As opportunities come and go, you and your company have to be ready for any occasion. Being able to order, develop and ship material in short periods of time at a comfortable price might save the day regularly. It could help you out down the line to open up a company store. At the same time, partnering up with a Promotional Products Agency will take care of everything related to branded products.
A company store will not only ensure that your products have the professional look they deserve, but also the quality it needs. It guarantees that all products have a standardised look. This will avoid giving an unprofessional impression and minimises the risk of damaging your public image.
At Red Tomato, we are the leader of Australian promotional products and customer branding. Our experienced management team and dedicated staff work closely with promotional product distributors and suppliers to identify new opportunities for each of our existing and potential clients. Why not give us a call today at 1300 776 733?
Imagine yourself in this situation: You come home from a long day at work with a massive headache. Your kids need to eat dinner and do their homework. The best part? One of your smaller family members stuffed a towel into the toilet. Now there is water flowing everywhere, and it’s beginning to seep into the kitchen. What do you do? Do you start researching on Hipages for plumbers in your area, or do you call up your neighbour who had an excellent experience with his last plumber? It’s a no-brainer, and also an example of how powerful referrals are. While you might not own a plumbing business, any company can benefit from recommendations. In the following paragraphs, we’re going to discuss how to use promotional merchandise to increase referrals.
There are so many clever ways to use promotional merchandise to your benefit.
After all, we built our own business around this service! The Promotional Products Association International has determined that 43 percent of people use a promotional product daily. 58 percent of people keep these items for up to four years. By putting your name on merchandise that people often use, you’re always in the back of their minds. We’re assuming that you’re already aware of how fabulous and rewarding promo merch can be. However, If you’re still not convinced, check out our post on how to combine promotional products with marketing automation.
Before proceeding, let’s make one thing clear: If you don’t ask for referrals, they more than likely won’t come pouring in. It’s like asking your Twitter followers to retweet you or requesting that your party guests bring something to drink: Ask and you shall receive. What’s so great about throwing promotional merchandise into the equation is that it’s a mutually beneficial process. Your client gets a free t-shirt, you get a lead to another potential consumer. Everyone is happy.
By now, we’re sure you want to know exactly how to use promotional merchandise to increase referrals.
One way is to literally ingrain that message into your products. For example, at the bottom of your coffee mugs, you could write something like, “Tell your friends know about our xyz company and let us improve your community!” When deciding what to write, consider what sets you apart from your competition. What would motivate clients to spread the word about your service? If your client is pleased with the work you’ve done, they will often be inclined to share their stellar experience with others. The promotional product serves as a kind reminder.
Another effective way to use promotional merchandise to boost your referrals is through a reward system. Say a client has recommended your service to ten people, who thereby hired you. You don’t want to be cheap and send them the same pen you pass out to strangers at events. As we’ve discussed before, people love being acknowledged and appreciated. Show your love by sending this rock star client a unique, elegant gift with your logo on it. This will clearly send the message that you are grateful for their loyalty.
All in all, promotional merchandise is an excellent way to gain referrals from your clients and successfully build your networking base.
Remember, however, that the products are just one part of the process. Think of them as a gateway to open up conversation. Follow up with your clients and be sure to remind them that you appreciate their business. Kindly encourage them to spread the word about you! This is how to use promotional merchandise to increase referrals.
If you need ideas for what kind of products to send to your clients- whether you are sending them an initial product to ask for a referral, or a follow-up reward, please let us know! This is our specialty at Red Tomato, after all!
Have you successfully used promotional merchandise to gain referrals? Share your experiences with us in the comments below!
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!
Email marketing automation is the newest form of nurturing personalised relationships with your customers; make sure you’re doing it right.
The idea that email marketing is a strategy of the past is a myth.
What does this tell us? It tells us that email marketing is still important and useful to generate leads. However, each email needs to be personalised and relevant to the specific recipient. An email marketing automation system is essential to being successful in this. Email marketing automation allows you to create personalised email campaigns and integrate the data with Google Analytics or other website trackers to learn more insights about your customers’ interests; in turn allowing you to send them more relevant content and offers.
The end goal of any email marketing is to nurture personal relationships with each of your current and potential customers. Here are some tips that will help you do email marketing right:
Create segments of one
Your customers want information that is relevant specifically to them. If not, your emails will get marked as spam without second thought. An email marketing automation system will tag recipients based on which content they click. By doing this, you’ll be able to see what type of content individual customers are interested in, how many times they have clicked on specific content (showing intensity of interest) as well as their demographics.
An email automation system will interpret data from when that same customer clicks through to your website, giving you feedback on what types of content and offers to send to which specific customers at what time based on their individual interests.
Skip the creative, catchy subject lines. A subject line that is simple and clear will cause 541% more clicks than clever ones. Don’t risk your email being tossed into the spam folder, and keep it simple. For example, switch out a vague “Still doing it the old way” for “4 Steps to Increasing Customer Engagement”. Stick to Red Tomato’s subject line checklist to improve open rates:
Succinct; keep it with a maximum of 50 characters.
Sense of urgency; why should the reader open the email at the exact moment it’s received?
Personalise; how is the email connecting directly with the recipient?
Tell your customer exactly what they’re receiving.
Convey a clear benefit to the recipient.
Commit to content
Email content needs to be relevant to each specific email recipient. This starts with knowing who your customer is; create buyer personas for the three different types of people your company is targeting with your emails. Knowing your customers’ personas will lead to stronger content.
Offer free gifts that incite action
Free gifts are a call-to-action. A promotional product giveaway can be a great activation to hook your email recipients to become interested in clicking on your content. A “to receive your free gift click here” email is also very measurable when using an email marketing automation system; and can give you great insights on the demographics and interest of your listeners.
Email marketing automation is the newest form of creating and nurturing a personalised relationship with your customer and makes it easier for the marketer to do so. Just keep in mind, each email campaign needs to be clear, relevant, and useful for the recipient to skip the risk of being tossed into Spam.
Tell us about some of the most relevant emails you’ve received. Comment below and share this post!
STATISTICS:
Consumers who purchase a product through an email offer are likely to spend 138% more than a customer who does not receive email offers.
A subject line that is simple and clear will cause 541% more clicks than clever ones.
1300 776 733
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