Promotional

What is the promotion gift industry, we must first know what promotion means.  Promotion, literally understood, is an act of promoting and helping sales.

Wikipedia explains "promotion" like this:

In marketing, promotion refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or issue. It helps marketers to create a distinctive place in customers mind. The aim of promotion is to increase awareness, create interest, generate sales or create brand loyalty. (1)

It can be seen that promotional is inseparable from commercial behavior,and promotional can be seen everywhere in our lives.

Promotional activities exist extensively in our lives, and even say that they are inseparable from our lives. We use a few cases to show

Case 1 Supermarket

When we are shopping in the supermarket to buy drinks, the brands participating in the promotion activities are often the first to be paid attention to, because they are placed in a more conspicuous position, made large-format billboards, and have photos of celebrities on them. With promotional activities, xxx drinks limited-time promotions, buy one get one free.

When we saw the billboard, we had the first impression. The drinks of this brand seemed to be good, with celebrity endorsements, and there was a limited-time discount campaign to buy one get one free. Should we also try to buy some?

Or next time we try to change this brand of drink? Although I didnt buy it, it deepened my impression and there will be a great possibility of trying to buy in the future.

As soon as we entered the supermarket and saw these billboard in just ten seconds, we were exposed to a lot of brand promotions, such as beverages, electrical appliances, sports goods, clothing, etc. When we intend to purchase these products, then these promotions have an effect.

Case 2 Amazon Black Friday shopping event

When we want to buy digital products such as digital cameras and computers, we may first find out in the physical store for the brand, or we may search and compare prices on the Internet, such as Amazon and eBay.

Especially when Black Friday is approaching, the promotion and promotion advertisements of major physical stores and shopping websites are rushing, so we know that on Black Friday, there will be more price discounts or there will be There are more gifts, such as free camera bags, free computer bags, mouse U disks and other items.

So if we learn about the promotion, we will most likely choose to place the order on Black Friday. Because this will get more benefits.

Case 3 NFL Super Bowl promotional advertisement

The advertisements for the annual Super Bowl events are always exquisite, so that the people on the scene and Hundreds of millions of people watching the live broadcast were deeply impressed.The wonderful finals, the wonderful performances of superstars, and the wonderful on the big screen The advertisements made this a huge traffic feast.

It is said that the 15-second advertisement on the Super Bowl will cost tens of millions of dollars, which is not inclued the production cost of the advertisement itself.Of course, the effect of advertising is self-evident. Nearly half of Americans/Canadians will watch these advertisements, which means that these advertisements will silently affect the purchase plans and behaviors of hundreds of millions of people.

Obviously, a brand that has done a lot of advertising will have many opportunities to show it in front of us to deepen our impression.Then various discounts and promotional behaviors and giving gifts will accelerate our purchase behavior.And if the product is really as advertised, high quality, low price and easy to use, we will happy to share it with friends around us.

The value of this kind of word-of-mouth communication sharing will be huge, and it will far exceed advertising and promotion. .

The promotional gift industry is a secondary industry that revolves around the promotion behavior and serves the promotion behavior.

Similar to the current TV advertising marketing and network marketing, the promotion is only the detailed brand promotion plan of the advertiser/brand, and the whole process of executing this promotion.

Different from the current TV advertising marketing and network marketing, TV advertising and network marketing use different broadcast time, different broadcast content, and different keywords to place advertisements, and advertisements are usually only fleeting in the eyes of users. Because there are too many advertisements of the same type, they often dont have that deep impression.

The main brand communication medium in the promotional gift industry is real products, which can be touched and can be used for a long time.such as those with a brand’s logo hat and glasses, they can be used for a long time and are so eye-catching among the crowd.

When brand owners are preparing to launch a promotional event, they will always aim to achieve the greatest promotional effect at the lowest cost. Looking at the current advertising industry market.

The cost of advertising has always been very expensive. Moreover, the homogeneity of advertising content in various TV advertisements and online advertisements in the same industry is very serious, and it is difficult to get users attention. So in order to make innovative and interesting advertisements, the cost of advertisers production of advertisements has also risen sharply, and the production costs of advertisements have also gradually increased, becoming more expensive each time.

When both advertising costs and advertising production costs are rising sharply, some brand owners have discovered an emerging project—the promotional gift industry.

About promotional gift，An answer on Quote answers this question very well:

Any item or product that you give to promote your business is a promotional gift. Usually, these products carry the tagline, logo, name or phone number and website address of the company that gives them to their clients. They are usually used to promote a certain activity of the business that is giving them – an event, a new product, a new service, a significant discount, etc.

According to the dictionary definition; “Promotional products, promotional items, promotional merchandise, promotional gifts, or advertising gifts such as a pen, mug, bag, t-shirt, sunglasses, coaster, calendar, cap, clock, diary, etc., given away to a current or prospective customer. These items usually carry the organization logo, name and address of the company, as well as information on the products and services, and serve as reminders. Also called advertising novelty or advertising specialty”.

All kinds of companies, organizations, and foundations use promotional products to advertise their services or products. Most of the time, those are products that people can find a use for in their everyday lives – products that have a company’s branding and website address or phone number.(2)

Some information on the Internet says this:

1. Promotional products are the most cost-effective, highly visible and naturally tangible form of marketing and advertising available.
2. The advertisers shown on these products have a recall rate of nearly 20% higher than any other form of marketing.
3. The promotional product industry is still growing year by year. In fact, the industry had an annual revenue of US$23 billion in 2018, ranking fourth in the companys largest advertising and marketing spending.
4. The average cost of promotional products is close to $1, which is very cost-effective.
5. The cost per display is even cheaper. The cost per display or CPI for promotional products is 3 cents, which means that every time a customer sees an impression of their brand, logo or message, it only costs 3 cents. This is the best return on their advertising and marketing investment. (3)

These boring data may feel boring and powerless. We continue to try to illustrate with some cases. The process of these cases is the whole process of gift promotion.

Suppose, in a large commercial area with a large population, in a hot summer, a certain cola brand has an promotion, sells iced and delicious drinks, and hires someone to send flyers.

If distribute the flyer at the same time, you will be given a beer bottle and a cup mat with a brand logo printed on it, and even a simple backpack with a brand logo printed on it, sunglasses. We do not hesitate to think that the effect will be better than just sending 1 flyer.

More importantly, the beer bottle with logo and cup mats with logo, in family dinners, colleague dinners, there will be a repeatedly exposure, if there are 15 people at the dinner, most of these 15 people will see the print The beer bottle with the brand logo,  and the cup mat.

These brands will give them a impression,It is also very possible to produce purchase behavior in the future.

Change a scene

Assume that there are 15 people who have received with logo brand a simple backpack and a sunglasses

They carried backpacks with their belongings, and put on sunglasses, all with the brand logo printed on them.

They shuttled through the downtown streets, such as Manhattan Plaza （hundreds of thousands of traffic every day）

They will very attract the attention of many passersby.

If the spread of 15 people is very limited, then if there are 1,000 people, 10,000 people,100,000 people wear backpacks and sunglasses with brand logos.They shuttled through Manhattan Square. the results of this exposure were amazing, and the results are hard to imagine.

More importantly, after the end of the day, they go to the theater to watch a show, go to a bar to drink, return to their company, return to their school, or return to their home,it will bring many multiple exposures.

These products that can always be used. if promotional product is practica and good looking. people will happy to always use it, then exposure will always occur.

Finally,  We don’t know the promotional actual operating cost, but we know calculate the cost of promotional products.

For example, beer openers with logos, cup mats, simple backpacks with logos,with logo promotional sunglasses products, The cost of a small purchase of these products unit price is definitely less than 1 usd. 

If it is a large-scale procurement project in batches, it will be too cheap to believe. The price will be lower by at least to 0.29usd.

We pretty sure these are true, because we are the glasses factory and we have taken many such orders. When individual product orders are in the hundreds of thousands, their production costs are very low in China.

Many people think that transportation will be expensive.

In fact, it is not. If 300,000 pairs of sunglasses are transported from Shanghai to New York by sea container transportation, it is 500 USD plus US import taxes and fees, inland transportation, etc. The total amount is less then 2,000 US dollars.

2000usd average on 300,000 glasses, averge 0.0067usd per pc.Calculate 300,000 pairs of promotional sunglasses gifts, if all put in large commercial areas, large sports events, large target customer groups, such as schools, theaters, hospitals, etc.

The effect of brand communication and the effect of repeated display will be very amazing.

Reference description:

1. Wikipedia entry: Promotion (marketing)

2. Quora:What is a promotional gift?

3. Printing impressions-the cost and profit of promotional products-Seth Barnett.