Category: Local Branding

Local Branding

Branding in Bulk: 4 Steps to Successfully Spread Brand Awareness to a Large Audience

Promotional products are a valuable resource for businesses of any size. They help to increase brand awareness and they help you stand out from your competitors, all while successfully targeting the right customer. Customers love getting free items that are useful to them, and you reap all the rewards by staying front-of-mind with anyone that sees the item. Purchasing a few promotional products is one thing. When you really want to see the benefits of them increase exponentially, you purchase promotional products in bulk. To make the most of your marketing budget, you need to follow these four strategic steps:

Set a Clear Objective

There are many reasons to implement a promotional product campaign, and the one you choose will play a role in the type of product you should select. Is your company looking to simply increase brand awareness and spread the word about your organization? Or do you want to increase sales by a certain percentage as a result of the promotional product blitz?

Choose the Right Promotional Product

There are literally hundreds of promotional products available, offering everything from pens to tote bags to USB drives and beyond—but not all of them will work for every business model. To determine the one that will work the best for you, ask yourself these three questions:

  • Who is your target audience? How do they spend their time? What do they do while they are at work? After evaluating these things, you can select a product that will be beneficial to them in their daily lives. Crazy products can get your attention, but it is the functional products that actually get used and help spread your messaging even further.
  • What message do you want to spread? Are you setting the tone for the brand of your business? Do you just want to get attention? Choose a promotional product that fits the quality and appearance of your brand. Every detail matters. A cheap pen will relay to recipients that you are a cheap company, while a classy pen that writes well will help you be known as a top-class brand.
  • What relates to your company? While all promotional products will have your company name on them, if you want the biggest bang for your buck, you will want to tie that product back into your marketing message. Ex: If your company helps to solve a problem, you could give out a Rubik’s cube. Then you could put a catchy phrase on it, such as, “We are here to solve your pest control problems.”

Start Small Before Going Big

After you have gone through the analysis process and determined the ideal promotional product for your company and target market, test your theory. The last thing you want to do is invest your full budget from the get-go only to determine your analysis was wrong. Start small, make sure your hypothesis can be proven, and then start your massive distribution.

Include a Way to Track Success

One of the most challenging aspects of promotional products is tracking their effectiveness. But there are some things you can do to keep tabs on your ROI:

  • Create a landing page for the product that only promotional product recipients have access to.
  • Include a unique promo code to use on your website.
  • Create an email address specific to each product so you can see what people are responding to.
  • Ask customers how they heard about you when they visit your store.

By taking the time to thoroughly investigate your target market and then choosing a product that they will love to use, you can experience great success by using promotional products in bulk.

Local Branding

Sign Advice for Businesses

We often are asked to help a business in making new shop signs for their advertising needs. Since this is the case, here is a list we have compiled at our headquarters in Mansfield that will help you get a great looking sign that attracts clients.

Give The Sign Some Life

You will want to make sure your sign has some life and will draw in people who are looking for your company. You probably have a lot of personality in your shop, but you need to make sure the sign you are using is going to reflect this personality as well. You just want to think about the impression you are going to make to your customers. Is the shop a fun place to be or is it one that has a more professional setting? No matter what, you will want to make sure the sign you are getting is going to give the visitors an idea on the type of things they can expect to see in the shop.

Remember: Good signs are going to tell the clients what they can see in the business and know what kind of line is in the brand.

Do Not Overdo It

You will want to make sure your signs are short and to the point. You just want to make sure your sign does not fail. You want o make sure you get your key point across quickly, not have multiple points on a single sign. By getting the main point listed, it will attract potential customers, but it will also make it easier for people to know more about what they can expect to see when they are here.

You will want to be to the point, but you need to remember that you can still be funny if you want to be.

Fonts

You will find that the first step is to find the best font for your sign – your sign company can help you here You will notice that quite a few sign shops have been ruined because they did not properly pick their logos. The shop sign is going to need to get the attention of people who are driving or walking by, so you need to make sure the letters are big and easy to see. Remember: People typically will not take the time out of their business to read what your handwritten script is going to say.

Colors

You will want to consider a variety of colors for your sign. Will they look good in the sunlight or when it is evening? What color pattern is going to make the shop sign look great and standout from the rest of the place. To really look at the colors you may want to look at the other signs in the area. You will think about the red ads in the paper, if it has other red ads it can be hard to see, but you will want to check out the how your sign can stand out. You will want to find colors that are going to look great, but also think about the people who have vision problems when looking at the sign and suffering from color blindness.

Design

You will notice that one thing that is going to really bring the sign together is the brand that you are going to present with the sign and how everything is tied together. You do not want to change things simply because you can, but you will want to make sure you have a uniform brand across the platform. Remember when you are launching your business you want to make sure it is going to look great and have an amazing feel.

Materials

Now that you have a great design in mind, you should know how to bring your signs to life. When are you going to be opening and what time frame as well? Are you going to need to have lights installed on the sign to make it easier for you to see the sign? Is the brand more of a high end location or a mass market place? What types of materials would you need to get to reach your target area? You want the sign to look great and not make your customers think you are cheap.

You will find that you have multiple choices of materials, which is why you need to find a material that will suit you best.

Size

You will want to know more about the amount of space you have available for the sign and how you can use this space properly. You will notice that signs can go on brick, hang out front, or even be above the windows to draw in attention. So you will want to know more about how to use the most of the space to get the attention you need to have.