A good place to start is with the customer, thought must be given to what they would actually find useful. For example, logo bugs are not going to be much use on a building site, however personalised tape measures will be much in demand. Although there are new promotional gifts launching onto the market every week it is not always best to choose these products in place of older and more established items such as pens and mugs. Just because something is new does not necessarily mean that an item will be more useful to your customer. However, it is true that every once in a while a product comes along that really fills a requirement like no other previous product, for example USB memory sticks.

The questions of “where" and “who will I target" still apply to the choice of promotional merchandise a company buys as they do to any form of marketing.

The “who" question can be answered by looking at whether you want to target customers or prospects and if so whether you want to target them all or just a small segment. By segmenting your target market and choosing different gifts for groups with similar characteristics you will find your promotional gifts much better received.

The “where" question involves establishing how you intend to get your promotional gifts to your intended target market. If you are buying personalised items for distribution by a sales team then this will have implications on the sort of item you can give away in that you can choose heavier or more bulky items. If, however, you mainly communicate with your target market via the post then a smaller light-weight item such as a pen is often ideal.

Quantity is not always better than quality, you must ask yourself whether your target market would prefer a high value item which they can keep or a lower value item which may not have as long a life. By varying the size of the intended market you need not raise your budget, it’s just a question of which type of item is right for your market.

Another important consideration is the design you intend to use on your chosen promotional items – how will your marketing message look when printed? For example, if your company has a large or very detailed logo then it may be difficult to fit on certain smaller promotional products. In order to help with this important decision a number of promotional merchandise suppliers now offer a virtual sample facility so that you can check how our logo, message or design will look when printed on a range of different items.

If you can answer all of the above questions then you are ready to place your order for promotional gifts today!