Maintaining Brand Consistency with Promotional Products

Your brand is a vital part of attracting and maintaining loyal customers. A brand that’s not consistent isn’t memorable, or worse, not recognizable to begin with. When you chose the logo, packaging, and images you would use to develop your brand, you likely made each choice carefully to ensure maximum exposure. When communicated properly, your brand shares your company’s mission and the quality of the products and services you provide.

Unfortunately, creating an enticing brand package isn’t enough to bring customers flocking to your door. Consumers must first commit your brand to memory in order to identify your product as a potential purchase. Advertising is the most common technique to engage potential customers. However, other techniques can help you build a consistent brand and provide a memorable experience for consumers. Promotional products are a good way to give businesses a chance to share a new or changing brand.

How Promotional Products Increase Brand Awareness

Promotional products are generally inexpensive products with a company’s logo and a small amount of information that are given to potential customers for free. These products are a way to give consumers something of value and advertise your product or service at the same time. Freebies are a great way to give consumers a glimpse of a new business, product, or service. They can also serve as a reward for loyal customers at an established business.

Promotional products can increase brand awareness even better than many marketing techniques. Consider the time span of traditional advertising. Whether your advertising technique is print, digital, billboard, TV, or radio; you only have a short time to make an impression. Promotional products often come in the form of something that’s used every day, and a useful product is often retained for a year or longer. The consumer who uses the product (like a coffee mug or phone stand) sees your logo each day. That consumer also acts as an advertisement as everyone she comes into contact with sees the product in use.

Some common promotional products include:

• Hats
• Shirts
• Coffee mugs and water bottles
• Umbrellas
• Flash drives
• Tote bags, backpacks, and golf bags
• Pens
• Leather goods
• Beach towels
• Mobile phone products like chargers and stands

Using Consistency for Success with Promotional Products

If promotional products are used to increase consumer awareness of your unique brand, you must have a consistent memorable theme. Without consistency, it’s likely your attempts at establishing a brand will be in vain. Simply inventing a catchy name won’t be enough to make consumers remember you. Consider these memorable brands: Pepsi, Nike, Oreo, Pizza Hut. The names of these products bring images to mind. From the patriotic colors of a Pepsi can to the iconic Nike symbol, practically every consumer can recognize these products without even seeing the brand name. The reason for this is brand consistency. Even as these products have made subtle changes to always stay modern, the basic theme has remained the same.

Your brand is displayed on every platform where your product name is located. Whether your company name is in a print advertisement or a social media account, the elements of your consistent brand should be visible. There are several elements to a brand. The most important elements usually include:

• Logo
• Color
• Graphics
• Font
• Style
• Message

While it may be impossible to fit each of these elements on every product, a combination of the ones available will likely provide brand recall. A high-quality print and graphics company can supply you with consistent colors, graphics, and fonts to provide consumers with a memorable image of your brand.

Choosing the Right Promotional Products to Increase Brand Consistency

Choosing promotional products to offer to potential customers can be an enjoyable process. It’s a creative way to advertise the brand you love and engage consumers in a way to develop a loyal customer base. Choosing items you like to use is only one way to decide which promotional products to supply. Instead, consider searching for products that best fit your brand and represent your company’s style.

There are several ways to decide which promotional products best represent your company’s brand:

• Choose items that match the tone of your business. Obviously, not all products or services evoke the same emotions. If your product is light and upbeat, you will likely have a different promotional style than that of a more serious company.
• Choose items that are a good fit for your company logo. If you have a big splashy logo, it could easily be diminished when fitted to a small item like a pen. Conversely, a tote bag would provide the same usefulness while offering a larger area to show your style.
• Choose items that match your picture-perfect color scheme. Most colors are available on a number of professional promotional products. However, if you have a logo with a unique color scheme or a large number of colors, your choices might be limited. If your vibrant logo or color scheme is an essential part of your brand, be sure to choose products that show the full scale of those colors.
• Choose items that will get the most use. If you have a logo that’s easily scaleable and a color scheme found in every product available, you have the chance to decide which items are most likely to be used by your customers. Choosing products that get daily use offer more exposure for your business. Researching products that are most popular among consumers is another way to entice consumers.

No matter which promotional products you choose, free gifts are a great way to alert potential customers to your brand. If you’re struggling to create brand recognition or trying to find a way to promote new products and services, consider providing promotional products to your potential customers. Brand development isn’t easy, and trying to take short cuts while developing promotional products could give consumers a different opinion than you envisioned. To learn more about consistent, top quality promotional products, get in touch with Superior Resource Printing & Graphics today. Our professional team is happy to answer your questions and discuss the value of your unique brand to get you started on the right track.