The Greenest Promotional Item of Them All!

Maybe, just maybe, the greenest promotional item of them all is an item that is not made of 100% recycled material, but yet an item that has the power to save hundreds or thousands of trees. You've heard of the USB Flash Drives. It is estimated that a 1GB USB flash drive can hold enough documents that would be equivalent to 50 trees. Each time that memory is reused, the number of trees saved multiplies. Gone are the days of giving out a 100 page printed and bound policy and procedure manual. Here are some great ideas for corporate use of custom USB drives:

1. Give out USB Flash Drives to your employees with all required company policy and procedure manuals and any necessary forms your employees may need such as incident report forms, accident report forms, change of address forms, and any other forms that may be needed in the future.
2. Give out USB Flash Drives to your clients with your digital version of your product catalog.
Give out USB Flash Drives to your clients with your PowerPoint presentation to help pitch a product or service.
3. Give out USB Flash Drives to your clients with a link to your website that automatically opens when the USB flash drive is inserted into their USB drive.
4. Give out USB Flash Drives to your clients or employees with a program that will auto-run when the drive is connected to their computer.

The prices on custom flash drives are much lower than they were just a few years ago. Why spend thousands of dollars printing a catalog when you can Go Green and hand out your catalog on a USB drive. Because a USB flash drive has a high perceived value and is useful, your catalog will be kept by the recipients long after your competitors catalogs will be thrown away.

Here's one of my favorite USB flash drives - it is available in a variety of storage capacities.

http://www.leedsworld.com/products/item/?item=1660-26

A New Marketing Plan in 2009

Are you getting a return on your investment?

Buying promotional items should be an investment, NOT an expense. This form of marketing can be very effective if done properly. There are many factors to consider when making your promotional item purchase to help increase the return on your investment.

Here are a just a few of the important key questions to ask yourself?

1) Who is your target audience? The elderly, teens, mothers, fathers, college-aged, etc. Buying an appropriate item for the targeted audience is crucial to the success of your campaign.

2) What is the delivery medium? Do you plan on mailing these promotional items? Do you plan on throwing them into a crowd? Do you plan on personally handing them out? You need to know the answer to this question and buy the appropriate item.

3) What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to market a specific product? Do you want to draw the customer to a particular event or sale? Each question leads to an answer that has a different solution in order to make your campaign more successful. Although these questions sound simple, they are more often than not overlooked. There are dozens of other questions to consider as well. Each individual campaign is unique and should be treated that way.