The number one thing you want to consider is the cost per contact you are willing to afford.

Say you manufacture and sell expensive pieces of equipment for a specific brand of industry. Each sale will report a five figure earning, and each prospect or company interested in your services has a higher probability of becoming a customer than if you sold something more common or cheaper. Then, you need to make the following calculation: how many of your commercial contacts will actually become customers. That is to say, from one hundred contacts your Sales Dept. people approach, five percent actually purchase any of your services. So from every hundred of branded promotional items your people hand out, five of them will become customers and render a fifty thousand dollar profit -this is obviously a rough calculation, not taking into consideration the rest of innumerable expenses involved in the production and selling of an item.

In this case, it obviously makes sense investing in rather expensive cool promotional items. Later we will approach this notion: more expensive does not necessarily mean cooler. What you need to do in this case, is to invest your money on more permanent, useful stuff for your customers, that they will use frequently, so as to maintain your brand present and handy. After all, that is the goal of promotional gifts: not only to leave a positive imprint on our prospects, but to be completely sure the customer will have the phone number real handy when the moment comes. You may argue “He could google you”. Yeah, but why take the risk.

A little role-playing is never too shabby. Put yourself in your clients' shoes. Think about what they need in their day to day activities. What their habits are. What are their actions and labors to which they devote a great deal of time. You also need to consider you want your article to be present there, next to their phone or their laptops; let your phone number or your e-mail be the first resource they run to when they are in need of an immediate, professional response.

Playing again the role of the expensive equipment manufacturer, imagine at first impulse you are to fall like a sucker for a set of golf clubs. You better think again. Most probably, they won't keep them in the office, at hand, where you want them to be. Also, remember golf lovers are very sensitive about their clubs, quality, brand, etc. If you are not a golf expert yourself, but you are rather dazzled by the singularity of the item, you run the risk that your clubs will be discarded, and end up lying in the garage, as if somebody gave Roger Federer a tennis racket. Will he use it at Roland Garros final?

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