As an entrepreneur, you’re undoubtedly always looking for ways to promote your business effectively while sticking to a limited budget. While there are many ways to go about this, it pays to consider investing in promotional items to achieve more brand awareness, increase leads, encourage sales, and build stronger relationships with customers, employees, and suppliers.

However, it’s not enough to simply buy promo gear and hope excellent results will come. You must make sure you get the most out of your investment by being smart and strategic in how you use promotional items, no matter what you buy.

Buy Goods that Align with Your Business Values and Wares

Don’t go out and buy the first promotional products you spot or the cheapest ones. For the best results, think about what will align with the reasoning behind your business and its values and mission. For example, consider a venture created to help tackle climate change or waste, where the mission is to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans. This organization wouldn’t want to buy promotional products made out of one-use or non-recycled plastic or anything else disposable.

Also, think about the types of wares your company sells. To help cement your brand in people’s minds, you want promotional products to relate to these goods or services somehow. For instance, if you run a gym or personal training studio, promo gear should relate to health, fitness, and wellbeing. You could buy water bottles, exercise bands, or sports towels, perhaps.

On the other hand, if you’re in the business of selling quality coffee beans or operate a café, you could purchase insulated custom tumblers for customers to use for their coffee or tea. Or, if you’re a consultant working with entrepreneurs and business leaders, you might gift people with elegant pens or notebooks.

Add a Call to Action to Products

No matter what type of promotional product you end up buying, don’t just add a logo to the goods and leave it at that. Add a call to action, too. For example, list a website people can visit to buy online or sign up for a newsletter or a phone number to call for more information or a quote.

You might also feature your social media handles so shoppers can follow you on these networks to keep abreast of your product or service releases, excellent offers, and other pertinent details. Utilizing calls to action helps you get a better return on your investment since people get reminded every time they use the products that there’s a next step they can take to engage with your brand and what you sell.

Understand the People You’re Buying Products For

A crucial part of using promotional products effectively is understanding the people you’re buying for. Whether it’s potential leads, current customers, employees, suppliers, or others, you need to purchase goods that will appeal to their interests, values, lifestyles, and more. Once you’re clear about who you’re targeting and what they might like, you can search for suitable gifts that will attract their attention and make them feel appropriately valued and seen.

If you can, try to personalize the promotional product gifting process in some way. For example, you might buy a few different types of items to suit different types of buyers. Also, you might like to have some more special, limited-edition items to celebrate your top clients’ 10th, 20th, or 50th purchase or thank a staff member who has been with the business for a record time or a salesperson who has just closed a huge deal.

Furthermore, see if you can personally hand goods to people and explain why they might like them. This situation might arise at the time of a sale, at a trade show or other event, or in-house when promo products are given out to employees or suppliers. Alternatively, write a heartfelt note to pop in with items if they’re posted to recipients.

To make the best use of promotional goods in your business, also avoid gear with a limited shelf life. You don’t want to have to throw products away if you can’t distribute them all in time. Gifts have more impact, too, when you promote them on social media and your website with fun photos and feedback from recipients.

Always analyze the results of each campaign, so you can learn from what has and hasn’t worked when you’ve purchased and given out promo gear. Each of these steps will help you achieve more of a return on your investment.