Small business owners can cater to customers who have a sweet tooth by distributing candy during June's promotional giveaways. Many clients might be unaware of National Candy Month so entrepreneurs can raise awareness for the celebration by distributing confectionery delights throughout the month. The sweet gifts will be nice surprises for consumers who don't want to wait until Halloween for some chocolate, jelly beans or other sugary delights. Additionally, assorted chocolate collections make great personalized business gifts for loyal patrons who deserve more than an average presents during National Candy Month. Read on for a look at some fun ways to celebrate June's tasty theme. 

A delightful chocolate treat
Few people would disagree that chocolate is the most enjoyable ingredient in most candies. While there are other options, a milk or dark chocolate bar is hard to beat in many cases. Consumers frequently turn to the delightful confection as the average American eats approximately 11.7 pounds of chocolate annually, according to GourmetSpot. This statistic highlights how much chocolate people need to satisfy their cravings. 

Small business owners can capitalize on GourmetSpot's findings by distributing small tins of chocolate as promotional marketing products. Many clients would appreciate a package filled with chocolate candies. However, entrepreneurs shouldn't limit themselves to plain treats because it takes more flavors to truly fulfill a sweet tooth's demands. 

For instance, butter toffee covered in chocolate offers a unique flavor that many customers will appreciate during National Candy Month. Alternatively, chocolate-covered cashews are also great snacks that consumers will love to to eat this June. 

For loyal clients, an assorted collection of chocolates might be the ideal gift. Recipients will love having a large box of snacks to keep on their desks in case hunger sets in before lunch. Custom messages can be emblazoned on the largest piece of chocolate so small business owners can tell clients exactly why the gifts are being given. The personal touch will help entrepreneurs endear themselves to tenured customers. 

Always have alternatives
Unfortunately, not everyone can enjoy chocolate because of their health conditions. For instance, consumers with certain food allergies have to stay away from chocolate to avoid new ailments. The Chicago Tribune explains that many patients with this affliction really react to specific ingredients and not the chocolate itself. Allergies shouldn't stop some customers from celebrating National Candy Month, and small business can ensure everyone can enjoy some sweets by having alternative treats ready for special circumstances. 

A small package of Swedish fish is an ideal option for consumers who can't have any chocolate because of their allergies. The snack is delicious, chewy and sugary, making it one of the best sweets anyone can have during June's month-long celebration. Gummy bears are also great alternatives to chocolate because they are tasty and come in a variety of flavors. Small business owners should have supplies of both treats to ensure that every customer can receive confectionery delights during National Candy Month's giveaways. After all, no one should be excluded from these great events. 

The post Get your sweet tooth ready for National Candy Month in June appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.

Wedding planners must be prepared to capitalize on National Weddings Month. Marketing strategies like promotional items and social networking can help event coordinators reach the optimal number of happy couples. Additionally, brides and grooms can use unique promotional products to announce and celebrate their big day.

Finding new clients
Unlike many entrepreneurs, wedding planners can’t rely on recurring clients for long-term success because a wedding is a one-time event. As a result, event experts must find new customers every year. National Weddings Month is the prime time for coordinators to market their services.

Event coordinators can give prospective clients promotional pens and notepads while they discuss available services and terms. Additionally, wedding planners can give a few ideas for the ceremony to start a rapport with the bride and groom. Recipients will use their functional items while they are exposed to advertisements for the coordinator who distributed the gifts.

After happy couples make their decisions, wedding planners can distribute personalized calendars to help with the ceremony.. A wedding is a massive undertaking and requires extensive preparations. The small schedules ensure that brides and grooms are aware of important deadlines and responsibilities.

Announcing the big news
Loved ones always offer advice when it comes to picking the perfect date for a ceremony, but the bride and groom have the final say. Couples are finding creative ways to announce their weddings using digital outlets. The Wedding Channel recommends setting up a social media page for the event, but it can be difficult to spread the word and find followers.

Quick Response (QR) codes can be used to direct traffic to web sites with important information for the wedding. Brides and grooms can print the digital watermarks on promotional magnets and calendars. The unique strategy gives loved ones an online database for the ceremony so that they don’t miss a single update.

Alternatively, QR codes can lead loved ones to other important websites. For instance, couples can use the images to send family members to gift registries or hotel pages for overnight visitors. Future husbands and wives should consider QR codes to make planning their wedding mostly stress-free.

The perfect wedding favors
Guests always expect to receive small favors at weddings. Every couple should give their loved ones gifts to say thanks for all of their support. The presents don’t have to be lavish, but a token gesture is always appreciated.

Candy is one such popular wedding favor. A small tin of chocolates or jelly beans can be given to every guest with the words “thank you” embossed on the covers. Couples can also give away chocolate wrapped to resemble gold coins to continue the tokens of appreciation metaphor.

Other popular wedding favors include coffee mugs and pint glasses. The wedding date can be printed on the side so that guests always remember the joyous occasion.

The post Attention all wedding planners: National Weddings Month is coming appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.

Valentine's Day is the perfect time to debut a new marketing campaign and reward loyal customers for their continued patronage. Entrepreneurs can distribute unique promotional products as small gifts and hold giveaways to attract holiday customers. Companies must actively advertise their events to reach the optimal number of consumers in February.

Small presents
Gift giving is Valentine's Day's most popular tradition, and candy is one of the most common presents. CreditLoans.com reported that 50 percent of consumers spend more than $20 on sweets for the holiday. Small business owners can participate by distributing small tins of their customers' favorite snacks.

Chocolate is one of the best confectionary delights, and companies can use different packages for their customers. For instance, every holiday shopper can be given small chocolate coins as tokens of appreciation. Alternatively, long-time customers should be given boxes of assorted candy as a way of saying thanks. However, some consumers may have chocolate or nut allergies, so owners should have other treats available for patrons who must adhere to special diets.

Promotional items can also be given as thank-you gifts. Customers always appreciate functional items like pens and tote bags, and some recipients even re-gift the items during present exchanges. CreditDonkey recently reported that 83 percent of consumers enjoy receiving regifted products during the holidays.

To celebrate Valentine's Day, companies should incorporate some of the day's imagery and themes. Instead of a standard corporate logo, hearts can be emblazoned on promotional pens while Cupid can be displayed on magnets.

Promotional events
A popular tactic for attracting holiday customers is holding promotional events and offering special deals. Business 2 Community suggests that businesses can attract customers by having unique giveaways from February 1 through 14. Entrepreneurs can provide different presents each day to encourage repeat business and generate brand awareness.

Promotional marketing products help businesses advertise well beyond Valentine's Day. The Advertising Speciality Institute (ASI) recently found that the average consumer keeps branded products for 5.8 months. No other marketing tools can offer comparable staying power.

Business 2 Community also recommends rewarding loyal customers on Valentine's Day by ramping up incentive programs. Businesses can increase rewards points and offer special coupons on holiday merchandise.

Holiday and event marketing
Companies should include Valentine's Day in their marketing campaigns to avoid stagnation. Consumers tend to ignore static content and enjoy when businesses make an effort to include holiday themes. Additionally, establishments can attract more customers to their promotional giveaways with timely advertisements instead of generic messages.

Greeting cards are popular in February, so entrepreneurs should turn to direct mail for some of their marketing needs. Companies can use holiday cards with personalized messages for recipients. Businesses can buy lead lists and send Valentine's cards to potential customers.

Direct mail is an analog channel in a digital world, however, so owners should be prepared to take their holiday advertising online. Social media is one of the best tools to use for Valentine's Day marketing, because companies can instantly update consumers on popular gifts and giveaways.

QR codes are another great digital marketing tool. Owners can emboss the digital watermarks on all of their promotional products and direct customers to special online offers or landing pages for holiday merchandise.

The post Fun activities and promotions for Valentine’s Day appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.

These giveaways don't need to be costly or generic. Instead, businesses should try handing out candy and other Halloween-themed items that promote the company as well.

Trick-or-treats
Candy is one of the most basic staples of modern American Halloween traditions. Wrappers and packaging are also ideal places for a firm to put its logo and brand name, appealing to children with their tasty offerings as well as parents who may see this gesture as an interest in family values. As kids collect and swap treats, they also study the labels to learn what's inside and draw associations between a brand and their favorite candies. Making that connection is invaluable for securing future customers.

For businesses in malls and other major retail locations, it may be difficult to put brand advertising up around that location, but many such sites have Halloween trick-or-treating hours, as Boston Online reported. A mall store that thinks ahead and greats candy promo items to hand out can give a personalized piece of advertising to every person that visits during that occasion.

Bags of promos
Another popular promo item giveaway this time of year are tote bags of all sizes. Handy for collecting candy and attractive for their year-round usefulness, Bagwell reported that this time of year sees the most orders from businesses looking to get custom logo bags printed for customers of all ages.

Around Halloween, such items may be even more highly visible to a broad spectrum of consumers. For one whole night, at least, a tote will be carried, filled and seen by dozens of different people, as the bag is presented ceremoniously to neighbors in the hopes of receiving more candy. A company that can combine its brand image with this marketing technique could experience much greater consumer interest come the holiday shopping season thanks to handing out Halloween promotional tote bags.

The post Say ‘Happy Halloween’ with promotional items appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.

These treats can be printed with a corporate logo or can bear custom wrappers, making them ideal promotional giveaways both at your business and distributed through other local vendors who are willing to offer them in their offices. Increasing brand visibility is one thing, but associating it with an item that relates immediate satisfaction to a customer can draw a very positive conclusion for clientele before they even visit an establishment.

A healthy investment

Seeing as the Globe and Mail reported that chocolate milk can be beneficial right after a workout, it might be wise to give chocolates to employees. The article points out that chocolate, created using cacao leaves, is actually a vegetable, explaining why some varieties of the candy are actually recommended in small amounts on a regular basis to promote good health.

Apart from improving their happiness in the moment, enhancing wellness can save money on healthcare costs and reduces turnover. A study by Towers Watson found more employers are moving toward wellness to circumvent costs, and if providing promotional items like chocolate can help workers do their job better, marketing teams can effectively cut costs by investing in candies for consumer and staff distribution.

Using chocolate as part of promotions also seems to work. Globe and Mail reported that Dairy Farmers of Canada had found creating chocolate milk campaigns with the Ottawa Senators NHL team had resulted in more than 60 percent of men saying they drinking the beverage to refuel after a workout, according to a Dairy Farmers' study. That reflects nearly three times as many milk drinkers than a similar study conducted a year ago.

Any day will do

If you miss out on Chocolate Day this year, remind recipients they can still use the candies as a tasty topping on July 15th, National Ice Cream Day. There are many occasions where giving chocolate as a promotional product is appreciated by customers and partners alike, regardless of whether there's a holiday at hand or not.

The post Celebrate Chocolate Day with candy for customers and employees appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.

One of the most basic desires of a human being is hunger. People tend to remember things that they associate with food and drink, like a great meal at a wedding or a cold beer on a beach vacation. A good way for small business owners to take advantage of this memory association is through the innovation of edible marketing.

This idea is seen across a large range of industries today. Jessica Simpson, for example, co-founded the popular "Dessert Beauty" line that features a long product list of edible cosmetics. The idea was snapped up by the industry, and now many competitors offer similar brands of products.

Get creative and combine already-successful promotional products with food. Fill a business card with candy or mints, or even construct the actual card out of chocolate. Send out personalized pens that are filled with chocolate syrup instead of ink. There is no design too far-fetched, and small business owners may benefit from following the model that the more unusual, the better.

Adding an edible component to any corporate gift will give it a creative twist that will leave clients with their mouths watering for more.

The post Cash in on the advantage of edible promotional products appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.

However, companies that want to take a break from offering tools like those, as well as soften their image, should consider making a temporary switch to promotional gourmet snacks and personalized candy. These items may disappear the moment that they've been consumed, and don't have the staying power that a promotional tote bag does, but there's an emotional appeal at play that is difficult to quantify, but very powerful.

The holidays that are swiftly approaching represent a very fortuitous time in which to make promotional candy available. The onset of winter is filled with holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas that emphasize consumption and eating, so people's minds will be primed for munching on some promotional chocolates or branded jelly beans. The warmth and comfort that these snacks provide will instantly be tied to an organization or its brand along with the nostalgic feelings and festive mood that this time of year brings about.  

The post Gourmet snacks appeal to customers of all ages appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.

It stands to reason that the best promotional products are the most attention-grabbing ones. Things that stand out will be under greater scrutiny and can help to disseminate the name of an organization and the industry that it's in. Consider the following unique promotional products to give away as part of a branding campaign.

Gourmet snacks
Small packets of food that people can munch on can be emblazoned with logos and mascots as part of a fairly successful marketing effort. However, to truly put a company's brand over the top and in the minds of more consumers, it is useful to consider using promotional gourmet snacks. Rich chocolate and delicious jelly beans stand out in customers' minds and help to form a high opinion of a company.

Luxury pens
Customers who do quite a bit of business can become unwitting ambassadors for an organization if they're given a promotional luxury pen. These useful items stand out due to their high quality and often eye-catching design.

Terrarium kit
Many people love the feeling that they've helped a plant to survive, grow and thrive. However, most people lack the green thumb necessary to do this. That's why a terrarium kit that allows customers to make their own strawberries is such a great promotional product. These items allow even the least plant-friendly person to grow delicious fruit. Meanwhile, all their hours spent tending to the plants will be reinforcing a company's name or brand image.

Flexi vase
Flowers are excellent decorations that can instantly spice up a drab office or full apartment. The only thing needed to take care of them is water and a container to keep them in. Promotional flexi vases are wonderful items that can be folded flat but stand upright when filled with water. Imprinted with the name or logo of a company, they make excellent tools for front desk receptionists.  

The post Some of the best promotional products are distinctive and original appeared first on Small Business Marketing Blog.