So you've been assigned to choose promotional items for your company or organisations next marketing campaign and you don't know where to start. Browsing for promotional items online is more confusing than helpful. Even consulting with the professional assistants offered by some leading online promotional gift suppliers doesn't really help. Before you start shopping for specific promotional items, spend some time planning and you'll find that the whole process is much easier than you thought. Start with our checklists to help define your thinking.

What Are Your Key Objectives?

Every promotional campaign should start with an objective. Here's a checklist of some of the most popular promotional objectives to help you clarify your objectives.

Sales Objectives

Sales objectives are among the most popular reasons for using promotional items and promotional products. Those objectives are perhaps the most varied of any other grouping. Your intent may be to increase sales or recognition of a specific product, to entice existing customers to spend more, to increase overall sales or to increase brand recognition and awareness. Your market may be the general public, web site visitors, trade show traffic or your existing customer base, to name just a few. Each of those objectives will help shape the promotional items that you choose and the method you'll use to deliver them in the most effective and strategic way.

__ Increase sales of a specific product

__ Increase overall sales

__ Lead generation

__ Promote new product lines

__ Build brand recognition

__ Increase trade show traffic

__ Increase name recognition

__ Increase web site traffic

Promotional Objectives

While the overall objective for most marketing and promotional campaigns is to increase business on the bottom line, there are more subtle ways to do that than a typical sales marketing or advertising promotion. Many promotional items are chosen as a means to cement relationships with customers and introduce yourself to potentially new customers. Some of those objectives include:

__ Thank good customers

__ Event and/or party gifts

__ New account gifts

__ improve customer relationships

__ Promote goodwill for company

__ Celebrate a company milestone eg anniversary

__ Community recognition / service event

__ Publicize objective/initiative

Employee / Staff Motivation

Promotional items and gifts are often used internally, either to motivate employees or to recognize their contributions to the company or organisation. In addition, there are ways to use promotional items to foster a company identity and team ethos among your employees. Some of the ways that promotional items can be used with staff and employees include favourites such as:

__ Recognize and reward service to the company

__ Motivate salespeople

__ Foster team spirit

__ Performance incentives

__ Increase staff productivity

Once you've defined your objectives, you'll find that it's easier to choose promotional items and products that fit those objectives. Your next step will be to define who you want to reach with your promotion. The next article in this series will discuss defining your influence groups.

For further information on promotional items, promotional products and business gifts check out the leading online suppliers today!