Where can you get major bang for your marketing investment? How do you know how effective your marketing investment is? When you take the time to plan out your marketing campaign using promotional items, you track the effect that your marketing has on your bottom line. Whether you spend a lot or a little on your promotional items, you want to be sure that it's money well-spent. The most effective way to measure the impact of a campaign using promotional items is to measure your sales before and after the promotional items are made available.

One company did more than that. In 1996, a marketing company decided to test the effectiveness of various types of marketing advertising campaigns. They divided a targeted mailing list into fourths, sent out one of four direct mail adverts to each group, then tracked the response received from each group.

Group 1 received only a trade advert in an envelope in the mail. The response rate for that mailing was a paltry .7% - less than one person in 100 responded to the advert alone.

Group 2 received a personalized letter along with the trade advert. That tripled the response to the mailing for a 2.3% response rate.

Group 3 received a promotional item ? a packaged stress ball imprinted with the company's name on it. The information included with the gift was similar to that sent in the personalized letter. The response rate rose to 4.2% - four out of every hundred people responded positively to the package.

Group 4 received an eye-catching package that contained a promotional incentive for a calculator. In order to receive their free promotional item, the recipient had to respond to the advert by a specified time. The response rate was an astonishing 9.55% - one person in every ten who were sent the promotional mail responded to it.

Interestingly, the response rate to the promotional incentive gifts was better than double that to the response rate of those who actually received a promotional gift. The cost of the last campaign was just a fraction of that directed at Group 3, so the difference in ROI is even higher than it appears.

What's to be learned from the marketing research study? The simplest lesson of all ? a well-planned promotional campaign that requires a customer response in order to receive a promotional gift is one of the most effective ways of promoting your business.

It's also important to choose promotional items that make sense for your business. The Gevalia coffee company, for instance, offers promotions that make use of coffee makers, travel mugs and other equipment that's used with coffee. Their promotional items target their projected customers and spark interest in their product.

If you're looking to design a promotional marketing campaign for your business, it helps to work with professionals in promotional marketing design. At Ideasbynet there are professionals who have decades in the business of promotional items sales and marketing. You'll find advice and a wide range of product options to choose from when it's time to promote your business and launch your marketing campaign.