Promotional marketing is somewhat less direct than the type of advertising you see on television and that gives it an important advantage. People are more likely to be receptive to marketing when they don’t know they’re being marketed to. Television is a highly effective advertising medium and is likely to remain so for quite some time, but in an entirely different way, promotional items are equally powerful.



One reason for this is that television doesn’t allow you to get up close and personal with your target audience. Promotional items, when used in certain ways, can be much more personal than a television advertisement. Consider, for example, the interactions that occur during a trade show—you’re interacting with the people who supply your company, and with the people who your business supplies. In these types of events you use promotional items to attract people to your booth, and then personal interactions are what allow you to attract new clients.

Another benefit of using promotional items that advertising media such as television does not offer is that you can target groups of people that television cannot reach—namely, your clients and employees. The advertisements that appear on television are targeted to consumers, and promotional items can quite neatly fill in the gaps and reach all kinds of people. Some businesses find that television advertising simply isn’t appropriate for them—if your company does not produce items for consumers, there is little point in using television and other public media to reach your target audience.

And then, there is the issue of cost. A thirty second advertising slot in evening prime time can run into tens of thousands of pounds—money that few smaller businesses can spare. Consider, however, that buying no less than 2,000 promotional pens can cost as little as ?300.00 or so, and those pens will likely last a small business a very long time. For most small business and even some larger ones, promotional items are by far the more cost-effective and affordable choice.

Finally, there’s the issue of variety. Television advertising offers little variety in some respects—rarely entertaining, often annoying, and often leaving one with the feeling that there’s very little difference between one advertisement and the next. Of course, you can target television advertisements to a particular audience, but you can do that with promotional items, too. Advertisements, for example, don’t necessarily give you the chance to offer something back to the people you do business with, even given that your advertising is targeted to consumers. Promotional items can be used in such a wide variety of ways—free gifts for customers in a retail store, purchase incentives, thank you gifts for clients, morale-building incentive gifts for employees—and this variety is perhaps one of the biggest aspects of this type of marketing that makes it so powerful.