In the business world, giving away promotional items as gifts is not only smart advertising, but the recipients of your gifts will feel appreciated and valued, which is exactly how you want your clients and employees to feel.

But are cheap promotional items a good idea? As with anything you can buy, there are cheap products and there are quality products. No one wants to spend more money then they have to, so how do you find the right balance between price and quality?

When shopping around for ideal promotional products you will find promotional items in many price ranges. Even in the same product category, such as promotional pens, prices can range anywhere from $0.20 cents to over $20!

Many businesses in an attempt to get the most for their budget will buy the least expensive promotional item they can find. While buying cheap promotional products is understandable from an accounting point-of-view, from a company image perspective this can be disastrous. What kind of image are you presenting to your clients if the promotional gift you send them breaks several days later? Or what use is the promotional pen if it runs out of ink a week later. Does this present an image of reliability and durability? Or an image of a weak company that cuts corners to save costs.

Promotional products are a great tool to add to your marketing arsenal. They are a very stealthy form of advertising. Think about in your own life... if you have fridge magnets at home, perhaps for your favorite pizza delivery restaurant ? you know exactly where to find their phone number when you're hungry. If the pizza restaurant had just given you a regular business card or paper menu, chances are the card of menu gets misplaced, or more likely forgotten since it's not somewhere you can easily see it.

So be sure to consider promotional products that will be useful in some way and left out in the open or used regularly. Great examples include coffee mugs, letter openers, wall calendars, and desk clocks.

Select quality over cheap promotional products and your advertising dollars will be well spent and a great investment.