Choosing Promotional Products: How to Reach Your Customers Effectively

Advertising and marketing are essential for companies seeking to promote their products and services. One of the most effective forms of advertising is the promotional product. The classic choice: ballpoint pens. Yet there is a great deal of other promotional material besides.

Whether B2C or B2B, promotional gifts form part of the marketing portfolio in every sector. And with good reason.

Which promotional material best suits your target audience

The choice of promotional products is vast, and almost anything can serve as a gift for customers and business partners. Depending on your sector, target audience and desired advertising effect, some promotional materials are more suitable than others.

Ballpoint pens are a first-rate promotional product with logo

The classic among promotional gifts is the ballpoint pen. The advantages are plain to see, and quite literally in hand: a pen is practical, useful in everyday life and offers an excellent area for branding.

Alongside the plastic biro distributed in large quantities at trade fairs, there are also premium ballpoint pens that serve as marketing tools. The advertising effect and the target audience for the two differ considerably:

• Elegant ballpoint pens with logo and/or the company name, together with a brief brand message, are used for far longer and therefore achieve a more lasting advertising effect than inexpensive plastic pens.
• Plastic ballpoint pens are mass-distribution items and therefore come with correspondingly high wastage. Premium metal ballpoint pens, by contrast, are given out selectively, for example to particularly important clients or loyal business partners. They are more expensive than plastic biros, but for that very reason they are also valued more highly by the recipient and achieve an above-average advertising effect.

In addition to ballpoint pens, fountain pens and rollerball pens with engraving can also be personalised for use as promotional gifts.

Tech promotional gifts offer considerable added value

The digitalisation of everyday life has also brought a technological shift in promotional products. This once began with USB sticks handed out by companies. Their benefit is twofold: not only can marketing material in the form of PDFs or images be stored on the stick, but the customer can continue using it as a data storage device. The brand message printed physically on it as a slogan or logo is therefore recalled time and again.

Since then, further tech promotional gifts have enriched the catalogue of marketing materials. Laptop mice, power banks and headphones through to portable speakers are all given as gifts, although depending on their value they may be reserved for specific target groups.

Sustainable promotional products are on trend

A current trend in marketing is towards ecological sustainability. Promotional materials are therefore expanding, with more and more reusable everyday items appearing.

These may include coffee-to-go mugs, thermal bottles and jute shopping bags for the supermarket or bakery, intended to replace widely used plastic and paper bags. In the category of tech promotional gifts, wooden USB sticks are equally on trend, as are sustainable wooden ballpoint pens among more traditional promotional materials.

Special requirements for B2B promotional materials

The rules, and indeed the possibilities, for B2B promotional materials differ from those for consumer-facing promotional products. While the main focus in the B2C sector is the direct incentive to buy, promotional work in B2B is more complex.

Business clients and partners chiefly want more in-depth information. Building business relationships is more demanding and takes longer. That is also reflected in the choice of promotional gifts.

These should be more individually designed and tailored much more closely to the company’s purpose than B2C promotional materials. Another principle also applies to B2B promotional products: higher-quality items are paramount.

Would you like to give customers, employees or business partners a thoughtful gift and are looking for something distinctive and personal? We would be pleased to advise you on our rollerball pens, fountain pens and ballpoint pens with engraving.