Every business 101 course has a section that discusses marketing and promotion. This is so because marketing and promoting your business is an essential element of selling your services and products to the public or potential customers. The main focus of marketing is to help you get brand name recognition and to have the products and services you provide become household words.



Making your business name a household word is called brand awareness and there are a number of approaches for acquiring that level of notoriety. The easiest, and possibly the most fun way, is by distributing promotional items with pens being a widespread and successful approach to increasing your company's name recognition. There probably are very few people who have not received a promotional pen from a business at one time or another. Their popularity is universal.

The kicker for using pens as your promotional item is to be sure you have a wide selection of them in order to meet the individual needs and preferences of the people who receive them from you. If someone favors a smaller lighter pen but receives a large chunky heavy one as a promotional gift, the pen more than likely will sit in a drawer and not be used. People like their pens to feel right in their hands.

When selecting the pens you want to use as promotional gifts, take time to select several pens of various shapes, colors, weights and designs so you will be able to offer your customers a choice. There is nothing more appealing than to show you care about your customers even down to the level of wanting their promotional pen to feel just right in the hand.

Most generally, you will find promotional pens being given out at trade shows, conferences, seminars etc. Vendors set up their products in an exhibition hall and wait for attendees to walk by their booth or table. When someone does, they use their promotional pen as a lead in to talk to the potential customer, give them their business card and put their name on a mailing list, if they wish.

One of the most interesting aspects of using promotional pens as your name recognition tool is that pens are one of the most often lost or left behind items a person carries. This is not a problem though. In fact it is great. Every time someone finds the lost pen you have a new person being introduced to your business name and a bit about what you do if you have a slogan or logo.

If you have done your homework well, you will have bought pretty good quality pens that will speak for your commitment to quality. The quality of your promotional items reflects upon your business reputation. Another important thing about not purchasing the cheapest printed pens possible is that they won't be around to continue to advertise your business. They will have broken and been tossed away almost as soon as they are distributed.

Using promotional pens is a great idea because everyone has a pen and needs a pen most every day, if not several times during the day. Make sure your pens are quality and have enough information on them to let people recognize you and what you do.