I have always felt that easy marketing promotions were broadly applied but not always very well thought out. Promotional marketing in some ways is generally a pretty good idea for a wide variety of things. You can give out things like stickers, pens, or other little trinkets with your brand name on it. This is a novel way to spend little money on an advertising campaign that will generate some degree of valuable name recognition. The question of how effective these easy promotional marketing campaigns are is open, however. If I open my pen drawer, I will find dozens of promotional pens and erasers in there, but I couldn't name a single brand offhand. Unless you sell something like stationary which people associate with pens, these type of promotional giveaways are nothing but a waste of money.

In my honest opinion - and I always like to inform my clients this - marketing promotions should only be done for special purposes. Guerrilla marketing can work wonders depending on the product you're selling, but the marketing promotion must meet ones needs. Just going out into a public square and holding a contest or giving away a product will not generate any business for you at all. You need to think "outside the box" and most important of all, strategically.

One of my all time favorite venues to offer marketing promotions is at nightclubs and pubs. When people are drinking alcohol, they will try their hardest to win anything. Whether you are giving away shots, appetizers, drink mixers, people will get excited about your marketing promotion. If they get to come home with a souvenir for their efforts, they will forever associate it with the fun of going out drinking with friends. This is what successful marketing promotions aim to do ? create those kinds of positive associations around your product or brand name.

Warm sunny days are also superb instances for marketing promotions. If you are willing to spend a few thousand of your hard earned dollars giving away free drinks in a crowded public thoroughfare, people will absolutely love you. Even if you are giving out something that doesn't strictly go along with the weather ? such as a salty or sweet snack ? people will still be grateful as long as they get some water with it. If you can get someone's attention at an unguarded moment, you can gain their brand of loyalty before they realize what hit them. This is what making a success from marketing promotions is all about. Leave the brand-name pens at home!