Success formula to stand out on the promotional products market.

I bet you can’t recall the last time you felt something special when you receive a branded gift. I know you can’t. But I do remember tons of faceless, useless and low quality stuff with logos on it in my trashcan. Imagine someone who instead of giving you a plastic pen, a cheap mug or faceless trinket, gives you a piece of modern art or a smart useful gadget instead.

There’s a lot of advice out there about how to grow distribution business. And while it’s true that choosing a unique promotional product that differ at least a bit from the generic cheap products is the key to success, distribution business isn’t just about delivering products with the branded area. To stand out on the promo market, there’s another outcome that successful distributors should be paying more attention to: delivering a better value for brands through promotional products that ensure the quality and engaging communication with the end customer; during and far after a marketing campaign.

We’ve worked with such brands as Google, Amazon, MasterCard and more. To create the next promotional product that will deliver engaging communication we start by asking brand managers to reflect on their best promo campaigns and answer a question: What kind of promotional products do you want to invest most of all?

This question typically elicits answers like these:

- “The promotional products that perfectly complemented character of our brand. Facilitated our brand communication to consumer.”
- “We need promotional products that make our customers surprised and enlightened by the design and quickly convinced by the high quality.”
- “Promotional products that people enjoy using.”
- “We needed quality motivational gift that will help us support transformations in our company.”
- "We need exclusive custom tailored gifts for our loyalty programs. It should be a hit for our loyal clients."

In other words, emotions of the end user and engaging brand communication are the two key factors for any successful distributor who’s looking for a new product for the client.

Here’s what I’ve seen leading promo distributors do to deliver a much higher value in contrast with their competitors.

1. Help your clients communicate the essence of their brand.

Loyal customers make over 85% of profit rate of any business (according to Forrester Research data). If picked correctly a promotional gift will become a powerful tool to influence or change the perception of the brand, raise brand awareness and loyalty and in the long run to increase profits per loyal customer. The larger takeaway remains: consumers are sick of the meaningless promo swags. And brands will have to adjust. To communicate the essence of the client’s brand make sure your next product offer features distinctive design, quality material and attitude which is reflected in every detail — concept of the promo product, design, packaging and branding techniques.

Focus on smart technologies and distinctive design. This is what big brands want and are ready to invest heavily. Smart technologies will give the opportunity to your client reach out to the customer far after a marketing campaign.This is what you should make emphasis on making an offer to the client.

Also, check out Teemoji — the first Augmented Reality T-shirt that allows the brand:

a) engage the customer
b) get a huge coverage through shared content by the customer on social media
c) reach limitless number of NEW customers
d) reach out to the loyal customers far after the promo campaign (via iPhone / Android).

Also, check out Five trends that will shape the way brands will communicate with the customer in 2017.

2. Eliminate the waste of budget. Make sure your supplier conduct multi-level quality check during production process.

Have you ever thought how the poor quality of promo stuff influence the brand perception of your client. Have you ever thought how much the burn rate influence your business reputation and how it eventually influence your future profit growth? My recommendation is you should make sure your suppliers arrange multi level quality check of the mass production. If you know your product is 100% of high quality — you inevitably win a long term client.

3. Consider promotional products created from scratch.

Great brands are constantly seeking the new ways how to engage and inspire their customer, how to communicate the message and value of the brand. It’s crucial to integrate the essence of the brand in the promo products. And very often the classic branding options are not enough.

To solve this business challenge consider promotional products created from scratch. To develop a custom promo product designers must dive deep in the client’s target audience preferences and characteristics. This is why any concept of the promo product created from scratch is entirely based on the brand communication strategy and drives much higher brand awareness in contrast with generic promo gifts. To take your distribution business to the next level pay attention to such additional service.

To sum up:
The key way to stand out on the promotional market is very simple:
- help businesses communicate the essence of their brand through promo gifts;
- make sure the products you select will be produced with multi-level quality check;
- add exclusive services such as promo gifts development from scratch that will enhance communication of the brand with the customer.

For collaboration with Aiia, check out our promotional products created in-house from an initial idea to mass production here. Become a distributor of Aiia products. Check out the Aiia Partner Program today.