Many small businesses focus much of their time, resources and attention on the puzzle of how best to attract and retain customers. There are a number of tools available for local companies to use in aid of connecting with consumers, but at the end of the day, the hunt for dedicated customers can feel like sifting through a haystack with a pair of tweezers.
That’s why so many organizations find themselves attempting to make the most of their branding efforts. If a business can focus its resources more efficiently, it can avoid the waste that comes from broadcasting a marketing message to too many people who will never become customers. Promotional products can help to do this, and one of the best places to deploy these products is in business-to-business interactions.
It may seem counter intuitive to give away promotional products to competitors, collaborators and clients rather than consumers. However, the benefits of promotional products extend beyond the people to whom they are directly given. Take, for example, promotional pens.
These items rarely stay with one person for long, especially at a large company. By giving a good-sized business a number of promotional pens, a small business marketer can rest assured that the promotional products will be circulated throughout an organization, and more than likely, to the friends and families of those workers as well as to additional organizations that do business there.
Promotional products that are distributed in a B2B setting also make efficient, targeted use of company resources. A traditional campaign of that sort might see pens, personalized mugs or logo USB drives donated at random to people who are already doing business with a company or who happen to come into contact with it.
Conversely, the organizations that a company is already doing business with are guaranteed to come into contact with similar groups in the future. A small business can’t always guarantee how its promotional products will travel through a market or industry, but it can hope to release those products into an atmosphere that is more fertile or receptive to the idea of doing business with it.
A promotional product that’s given to a business also helps to exploit one of the most important aspects of those tools – their usefulness. An office setting is one that constantly makes use of calendars, data storage devices, pens and pencils. Promotional products delivered to this sort of place are guaranteed to get some heavy use and will be gladly accepted by clients and collaborators, who will relish the office supply savings that the products net them.