A promotional product is nothing more than a normal item that you add your business's name, slogan, web address, or logo to and give out in an effort to raise community awareness of your company. You probably have some promotional products in your home. Some examples include pens, key chains, coffee mugs, magnets, and calendars.

Distributing promotional products is a powerful marketing tool. Who doesn't love to get stuff for free? Once we do, we tend to keep such items around for a long time. If your company's name appears on such household objects, customers will be constantly reminded of the products and services your business offers them. You can use the following locations to organize promotional product giveaways and maximize contact with your customer base.

* Your company's website: You can organize a giveaway on your website each month and thus raise the number of hits the page receives. For example, a website filled with cooking information will have lots of success with a giveaway that offers a measuring cup, apron, or recipe holder as a prize.

* Other people's websites: In addition to holding a monthly giveaway on your own site, find other non-competing websites and offer one of your products as a giveaway for their site. To be effective, the site should have a similar target market. It doesn't make much sense to contact a bass fishing website and offer them an apron as a giveaway.

* Upgrade orders: You can encourage your customers to upgrade their orders by offering promotional products in exchange for their upgraded purchase. Following the example mentioned above of an informational website about cooking, you could offer a customer who buys two recipe ebooks a free apron in thanks for their purchase.

* Best customer: Another twist on this idea is to surprise your best customers with the promotional item. Go back through your records from the past year and send anyone who spent over $100 a little gift. This will show your appreciation and your customer will be so flattered they will continue to buy from you again and again.

* Best affiliate: You can reward your best affiliates with a promotional product. It will serve as big thank you, encouraging affiliates to work even harder in promoting your company's goods and services.

* Businesses you are not in competition in with: You can advertise by word of mouth and get valuable business referrals from non-competing businesses. This refers to companies that have a similar target customer base but does not offer the same products and services that yours does. Make-up artists and hair stylists and graphic designers and virtual assistants are two good examples of non-competing businesses that can be used for advertising to the mutual benefit of both companies.