Promotion Works

Real Estate Farming

2008-03-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

The great majority of my career in promotional products, I've worked with Real Estate agents and brokers on farming products. For those of you who do not work in Real Estate, all you need to know is that if you receive cards and pens and calendars on your front door periodically, you are in a real estate agent's "farm". They're sowing the seeds and growing their business, slowly but surely.

For those of you in real estate, you know of course that farming is just one part of your overall branding and relationship marketing efforts. There are ways to keep in touch with new clients, old clients, and so on.

Please call me to discuss your farming programs. I can help sort out which products, either seasonal or otherwise, fit within your budgets for your farms.

This next couple weeks, if you have not done so already, we are wrapping up orders for professional baseball schedule magnets.

Sports schedule magnets, by far, have brought to my clients the highest level of response from their own prospects and clients. If you give them a Reds Schedule in Cincinnati area, this summer they will call and ask when the Bengals Schedule is coming. Trust me.

This post is a little late to the game, so to speak. NOW is the time to order the baseball schedules if you are interested in getting them out right at the beginning of the regular season.

Depending on where you are, you may interested in PGA Tour schedules or NASCAR cup racing schedules, too.

... So Can We Look At Your Branding Now?

2008-01-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

Most promotional products websites are slick online search engines. A few paragraphs about "What we do" and - poof - suddenly you the consumer are supposed to start finding your own products. Sound about right??

Now, why the heck should you be expected to trawl through search engines in the first place? You come to those of us who call ourselves professionals for a little guidance and expertise.

Please, let us not play games with your brand image...

If you simply want to browse a catalog, no problem, I have one. And it is proprietary, not one of those generic magazine things you get from the door-knockers.

I can send you the hardcopy in the mail, or drop it by anytime, or you can look at the page-by-page online version RIGHT HERE.

However, WAIT, before you go... I must tell you, I'm dying to give you a little personal guidance. I'm free. Really. And I'm an expert. Really.

Just recently I passed the 20-year mark in the promotional products industry. That's almost ... ridiculous. Who spends twenty years around imprinted products and merchandising programs?

But back to my point: I have seen some winning ideas, and I have seen some losers.

Mostly what I have seen for 20 years are products being pushed as "ideas", when really we need to start with the idea and then build to the product, and to its distribution, our tracking of its effectiveness, and so on.

Please call me, either before or after checking out my catalog. Yes, it is full of products, but then, I'm full of ideas.

No games... unless, of course, a nice logo game device like the one shown above is what you're looking for.

I'll be glad to give you a good listen, and then a couple of ideas.

1-888-795-8299.
Don Sheffler

Things You Don't Need

2007-02-01T06:04:00.000-08:00

I don't need anything. Neither do you. Neither does your client.

This is true 99% of the time.

You don't need a logo pen. Don't need a stapler or a highlighter. Don't need a logo coffee mug or a mug warmer, a coaster, a clock or a frame or a calendar. You don't need a calculator. You don't need a pizza cutter or a barbeque set, you don't need a pair of sunglasses, and you certainly don't need an LED light on your key chain. You don't even need a key chain, for Pete's sake.

Most of the time.

It's just that when you'd like to have any of those things, you want them handy. You want them now. You want them there for when you actually do need them.

This is why we (business people) should love to give logo branded items to our clients and our prospects (regular people).

What we (business people) really need, is to be in touch with our clients and prospects at the right time and in the right way. Logo products are tools for building those relationships. They help to put us in the position of filling needs when they arise.

Just something I'm thinking about as I lift a sip of coffee to my lips - coffee in a logo mug from a local church committee - and then set it back down on the mug warmer that's been sitting on my desk for the last 3 years with the logo of a local electronics company.

I don't need these things really, but I sure appreciate having them here.

Way To Go, Bob

2006-03-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Not... that it's... really... funny....

Pieces of the Puzzle

2006-03-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

The ad agency and the marketing department and the sales and fulfillment departments are all synchronized. All the pieces fit together like a purty puzzle. Some companies have it all together.

Most companies don't.

Not because they're noodleheads; it's just that most businesses are in a state of flux. Violent change to either keep up with the competition or to take the lead. Multiple overlapping initiatives and planning for 2 and 3 quarters out on the immediate, and 2 or 3 years out on the longer term, make for quite a mosaic. The current Winter ad or promotions campaign often has nothing to do with the current product development for the Fall roll-out, or the Summer mailouts for next winter's trade shows. Etc.

In other words, even for the companies that look like everything is peachy, nothing is ever set. The puzzle is never solved. It just changes for better or for worse and the main goal is to be most successful with the current configuration. Take advantage of the patterns as they pop up and know your next move.

How do promotional products fit in to all the chaos?

Nicely :-)

Whether you're a corporation with 150 offices peppered across North America, or a one-person home-office superstar, logo merchandise and premiums can be quickly integrated into an existing brand push.

On the flip side, those of us who do nothing but promotional marketing can always lend a hand in the planning stages. Instead of finding yourselves scanning catalogs and websites looking for acceptable handouts or gifts to go along with your looming events, take advantage of us ahead of time.

You know your objectives. We can make suggestions about what might best work with your budget, your timeline, your collateral campaign, your feedback loop. (Look ma, huge buzzwords! Sorry about that.)

All to say, can't hurt to check with us early. We can be a really easy piece of the puzzle.

It's About Time

2006-02-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

Why can't you just source your own promotional products and logo gear? It shouldn't be so hard to find what you're looking for online or in a catalog, right? Why not just go direct to the source? Why, in other words, would you even consider dealing with a third party, namely, me?

It's about time.

I don't mean I'm glad you finally got around to asking me that. I'm saying, the answer lies in determining the amount of time you might want to invest in doing what I've made a career of doing. What I have the resources for. What I do for you as, essentially, an unpaid staff position.

Two huge questions to consider:
How much is your time worth?
How does that compare to the net savings realized when you search around to feret out the "best deals"?

The plain truthfull fact of the matter is that you could just as well handle all your own promotional products sourcing. Just as you could also do all the graphic design on your print pieces and you might be able to deal with all the tech issues with your computer network at the office. You could do all your own investing and stock trading. You can do all your taxes too, right? Why use a CPA? You can probably also rebuild your transmission. Given enough time. And a place to do it. And the tools. And the parts.

But I think you get my point. None of these things are your job. It's inefficient to an absurd degree. And you don't have the knowledge of a professional in my field; there is a vast and growing array of new and creative solutions for acheiving your branding goals.

I had a client once who very cleverly determined that he could get blank shirts from a wholesale outlet locally, drive them to Mexico to get them embroidered, and stock them at his office to distribute to the employees, all for about half the cost of purchasing the same product through me.

I applauded his efforts. But let's do the math.

Forget for a second the time he put into finding his sources, I have no idea how or where he came across them. Also let's forget the most important part of the process, in my opinion, which is the strategy and decision-making that went into determining the need for the purchase in the first place. This company apparently needed a bunch of shirts. More on this issue in another post.

This person, let's call him Bob, would go pick up ten boxes of 24 shirts each and drive two hours south into Mexico and drop them off, and drive 2 hours back to work. With time down there included, about a 6-hour project. The next week he would make the 4-hour round trip to retrieve the shirts and bring them to his office where he held them for distribution on an as-needed basis.

Instead of paying me roughly $20 per shirt, he got it all done for $10 per shirt. Well played.

Forget the gas and wear on the car. Forget the busy-work at the office around stocking and sorting 240 shirts. Come to think of it, I don't know how he crammed 10 big cardboard boxes in just one vehicle for those trips, but we'll ignore that too.

His gross savings was $2400 on this project, $10 each on 240 shirts.

Bob, did I forget to mention, is the head purchaser for a division of a large corporation and he has had the position for a couple (few?) decades. My educated guess is that his salary is near $100,000. This translates to roughly $400 per working day, two of which he used up with all that driving around. Again we're completely ignoring peripheral costs and other planning time.

Bob saved the company, all told, at most $1600 by handling everything himself on an incredibly simple shirt order. Did I also forget to mention that Bob's division alone does $150-Million per year in business?

So besides using up two business days, what other pitfalls might Bob and his corporation encounter in this job? Well, what if there are "waste" pieces in the 240 shirts, torn pieces or miscolored pieces? (there always are). What if the wholesale outlet doesn't have any replacements? What about re-orders? What if the sizing is inconsistent or the shirts are nothing like the original samples? What if the embroiderer ruins or loses some of them? (they almost always do) What if the design is problematic, does Bob have any recourse? Is Bob's relationship with this company in Mexico such that this factory cares to preserve his business for the future by making good on mistakes now? Is the factory even making any profit at all? Do they care if they ever see Bob again?

Is any of this worth $1600?

This kind of maneuvering, inevitably, costs Bob and his company money, and relationships, and they will forever be on the lookout for new deals and new suppliers.

Call me. It really is about time.

"Y" In The World

2006-01-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

Apparently "Generation Y" is the target of the year for advertisers and marketing gurus. Problem is, it's an elusive target. In an article I just skimmed in one of my industry mags, Generation Y seems to harness extreme brand loyalty while being wildy fickle at the same time. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

I think the problem is the 15-year span of babies being dubbed "Gen Y".

What I get from all the analysis of Gen Y is that they want fun, they want new, they want tech, they want what works and they want it now. Hey, isn't that what Gen X wanted?

Here's the thing. What with the internet and the ability to touch your audience right this second (note, I am composing a newsletter article at 7:30 am Monday morning January 30 and it will be available to read online by about 7:40), it appears that knowing your audience's interests would be of prime importance.

So is Gen Y, as a whole, "your audience"? Of course not.

Your audience is your buyer. Or your client. If you make aluminum cast products for manufacturing machines, your audience is the designer/engineer/procurement chain in manufacturing. Point is, you know your product, and your direction. If you know that, you know your audience, at least to a degree. That's a good start.

Now, apparently, the message in my industry mag is that MY audience is Gen Y. I guess that's true. You want fun, new, tech, what works, now (just like Gen X did).

OK, I can work with that.

Keep Warm

2006-01-24T07:03:00.000-08:00

While you and your clients should all be looking toward Spring and Summer, first there is that pesky couple of Winter months staring you in the face through March.

Think Warm thoughts.Fleece blankets, gloves, knit caps right now are good ways to get your logo welcomed into somebody's home and heart.

But remember, nothing, not even fuzzies and cozies should be dispense haphazardly, unless of course you're going for the "diluted" class of impression.

If you have an event, a product introduction, a kickoff to an internal initiative that needs some punch, then find a hot connection between the message and the product. Of course, calling me would help you sort that issue out without pulling out your hair. You need your hair, remember? It's winter.

Remember also that where you might think of a coffee mug, I'm going to think instead of the mug warmer. Most of your clients have a trunk full of mugs, and not a single warmer on the desk. Which do you think will sit in front of them longer?

Conversely, including a single pack of coffee or hot cocoa is a great way to sweeten an invitation for a meeting. The product won't last but the impression will.

Just a few thoughts. Have a great burry Tuesday.

The Art of the Awesome Business Gift

2005-02-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

We're not talking 20-cent leave-behinds.
You don't put this in a bowl at a street fair, and you don't drop it through the business mail slot and move on.

You're not, in fact, giving this to anyone who does not already know you.

This is a GIFT. It is a Thank You. It is a Business Valentine.
It might be a Reward for a Referral, or just for a great business relationship.
It's special.

That's why you spend $40. Or $60. Or $260. Not that the dollar amount is truly important, but the thoughfulness you display by consciously choosing, purchasing, packaging and/or personalizing, and then delivering, a gift of obvious character sets your entire relationship apart from those people involved in the daily ins and outs of your client's day.

Every quarter you should be identifying your top clients or colleagues. It shouldn't be hard, they're the people you see probably all the time, or work with on a daily basis. If not face-to-face, it's a relationship that is central to your business success. You know who they are.

A fine and thoughtful business gift or a thank you gesture serves a couple of purposes.

It first of all shows the client that you truly value them. I have two very successful colleagues who, not coincidentally, both exude the same attitude to their clients. They LOVE them. They let them know, regularly, with nothing required in return, that they appreciate the relationship they've forged.

This is far more important than you may realize. These people have relationships with their co-workers that are facilitated in-house, through daily contact, retreats and social events, even carpooling and lunching. Your relationship with these people, too, is just that, a relationship. They trust you, professionally, and part of that is their familiarity with you and your ability to work with them personally.

None of this is a substitute for being competent, and professional, and serving your clients' actual needs, providing solutions. This, point of fact, reinforces your recognition of the value of the client and appreciation for their trust in you.

The second effect of a gesture of this stature is to create a talking point outside of the business minutia. Put simply it's a chance to talk about other stuff. The photo above is a Swiss Army brand USB Flash memory stick. The USB stick is removable, and it actually replaces the knife blade. You can take it on the plane; note also the pen included. You are guaranteed that at various times after the client has taken possession of this thing, that he or she will relate some random story about using it or showing it off somewhere, the way any two day-to-day co-workers might relate on a given day when not talking business.

Build those relationships, but just as importantly, acknowledge your appreciation of them.

TRADE SHOW TRAFFIC Part 2:"Swimming Against the Surge"

2005-01-20T15:40:00.000-08:00

(If you missed Part 1, go here

OK, maybe you DO want more trade show traffic. Let's go against my premise in Part 1 for a second. Yes, there are times when you want 50,000 people flowing through your trade show venue like a flood through a plain.

Let's try to simplify this. Name Brands displaying at a Consumer oriented show, don't have to try hard. Their very name has fueled it's own fire. Everyone wants to see the new I-pod at the Apple booth. Linux fans are looking for anything Linux. This is the Hollywood appeal of a consumer show.

But, let's say you make a specialized refrigeration unit and you're showing at a builder's convention or a designer show. So, you're not Nike.

They're tired, they're hungry, and very few of the hundreds drifting past your booth want to get stuck chatting with you for too long. Not more than seven seconds or so. Here's where 50,000 attendees could be a problem.

Your job at this point is NOT sexy.

Is there a way to TAG everyone? Get everyone a little something to compel them to look you up later? Let them know quickly what you do AND that they should want to see you again? Like, when you both have more time?

Yes. But you're not going to do it with a pen. Or gum. Or a foam hat.

Seriously. Think, here. Here's a little aside about my business: Many people in my profession are thrilled if you simply want to buy thousands of candies and pens and coloring books and squeezie hearts and whatever else, for no discernible reason. Shame on them.

Since this post is not about engaging people in your booth, but rather, dealing with having "too much traffic", let's just address what you really want to do in this situation.

Don't just wear a big goofy hat and suggest that they go to your site, or call for a catalog, or leave you their card. MAKE them WANT to do all that. Spread the lottery mentality. Give them an opportunity to receive a very big payoff for very little effort and time.

One way to do this would be to give out a web lottery card or a secret code or one half of a valuable gift, anything that will truly compel them to do the simple thing: Log onto the site, and see if they've won. Or log on to claim the other half of their piece. This is viewed by them as ONLY FAIR.

For instance, in order to see if they've won a widescreen plasma T.V., if they merely have to log into your site, where they'll see your product, and then register their email address and the position they hold at their establishment... well, they will. Wouldn't you? How much more likely would it be for you to go to this vendor's web site, than if for instance you had an ad slick in your bag and a plastic pen with their web site address on it?

Exactly.

The beauty of this kind of strategy is that with the same money you might spend on thousands of mini baseball bats or neon refrigerator magnets, with dubious results and limited tracking potential, you can execute a complete prize liquidation program, spend mere seconds per touch at the show, and have a very accurate tracking and follow-up mechanism to fine tune your efforts with each new show.

Trade Them Up !

2005-01-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

When it comes to supplying a useful gift, utility is not the be-all and end-all of the equation. The item MUST replace what the recipient is already using, right?

If you are going to give a logo brand gift that your client or prospect is supposed to keep and use, and therefor give your message the most bang for your buck, KNOW that the gift is going to have to be nice enough or different enough to actually push aside an item they're already using.

Example: MUG. Everyone has a mug. Maybe two. Or eleven. The mug you're asking them to accept and use, and be happy about pouring their coffee into, needs to be attractive. Simple as that.

Look, people love gifts. If you give me the cheap $0.88 mug, I'll use it. Just, not at my desk where I might see it all day every day. It'll hold paperclips in the garage at home. Sorry, you've really sort of wasted $0.88 each. Not including the slightest cost of packaging or delivery.

The above mug is $2.50 to $3.50 depending on the quantity you buy. The extra couple dollars for 144 or 512 or 1024 pieces used in the campaign, would make all the difference in the world in terms of usefulness to your recipient, which will translate into a return on equity for your project.

This holds true with any of the standard fare - mugs, mousepads, writing intruments, key-tags. Don't consign your valuable message to the junk-drawer or the garage. It's doing you no good there.

TRADE SHOW TRAFFIC Part 1:You Don't REALLY want more trade show traffic, do you?

2004-12-30T14:44:00.000-08:00

Typically when I'm called by somebody who is planning to occupy a booth at a Trade Show, their biggest need is to increase traffic to their booth.

Or so they believe.

My question is, invariably, "Why?!"

I'll grant you that many trade show booth dwellers sit in relative obscurity during their stay on the floor. But this is not the norm. More often than not the booth jockeys are overwhelmed with lookers and lurkers, pen-grabbers and card-eaters.

Unless the vendor has truly organized and prepared to efficiently process the waves of overwhelming foot-traffic, they will fail at the one thing they have set out to do: Create a new relationship.

Instead they stand pitifully at the waterfall trying to fill their Dixie Cups.

Let's say, instead, that what you really want from a Trade Show is
BETTER traffic,
more qualified traffic,
more responsive traffic.

You want to filter out your true prospects, you want them to quickly get a valuable nugget of information from you, while you in turn get their contact information, and in the process you both get a commitment to another meeting, a meeting that can take place via phone, email, or in person.

This kind of interaction should take seconds. There should be a recognition by the both of you that you will be speaking again shortly. There should be an exchange of value.

There are a number of things you need to try to get at your trade show. Tons of traffic, is not one of those things. Certainly, if you get tons of trade show traffic, you want to be able to process the hordes to your best advantage. Presumably you will distribute something to get them all to followup later, register at your site perhaps, request more information. When you are all a little less busy.

In any case what you want, ideally, is this:
You want contacts to leave you information.
You want contacts to have a compelling reason to come to your website or call your office as soon as they get back.
You want to answer any pressing questions and find out how you can be of value to your prospect.
You want to thank them.

I'll discuss more about how you might do these things next time.
Thus ends part one, where I tell you to stop wishing for things that will do you absolutely no good.

About my LogoBlog

2004-12-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

Promotional Products, at their core, are really just what they look like: STUFF.

Stuff with messages. Things you get at the trade shows and street fairs like candy and pens. Bears and baubles from Banks and Real Estate Agents. Lots of stuff.

But Promotional Marketing is Magic.

Creating a High-Impact Incentive, that works, is tingle-inducing.
Coming up with a Moving and Memorable Executive Gift, not easy, but worth it.
Developing a Brand Awareness Program with a measurable return on investment. THAT'S a trick.

Listen, you can put a logo on anything. Really. If it exists, someone has invented a way to brand it. And show it in catalogs, pamphlets, fliers, emails, online stores, ad infinitum. But that's all easy.

Typically the logo people in my industry will simply let you know that we're "here".
And you the consumers are supposed to flip through the catalogs, troll the online search engines, pick out a nice pen or a tote bag, and go about ordering it. Yay, you found the lowest price on something that you don't even know why you're buying.

What, you want,,, guidance? Ideas? Huh?! You mean that's not why they pay you, the VP of Marketing? You say the HR Director isn't supposed to be driving shirts from Costco over to the local low-bid embroiderer??? The PR department doesn't have time to look through KeyTagsO-Rama.com? Don't you people work?!

This Blog might be fun. It's FREE, in any case. I'm just thinking out loud, tossing ideas around that you really ought to be charged for. If I didn't already enjoy this so much.

So come into the mind of a Promotional Marketing Professional. A Branding Guru. The Logo guy. You might be surprised at what you find there (( ,, hurry hurry ,, cleaning out porn site cache, putting away book reviews, baseball cards, e-solitaire, cake - where'd that come from? ,, ,, OK, you can look now)).

Well, alright, this isn't a formal meeting. You will not be tested on best practices for non-inventoried fulfilment programs or technology tips for e-catalogs. Unless I'm in a mood.

Really, this is my career.

If this is what I think about all day, if this is why I go to conventions and regional meetings
- heck if this is why I'm licensed to have an acronym after my name! -
wouldn't you think I have a thing or two that I can impart? OK, Maybe. We'll see.

You don't have to buy anything.

Just steal ideas, take the credit. It's what I'm here for.
I might even answer questions.

Don Sheffler, CAS
Don@PromotionWorks.com

About Don

2004-01-01T07:13:00.000-08:00

Don Sheffler has been in the Promotional Products industry since 1987.

While this blog is decidedly informal, Don is really serious about working for his clients.

Don has an official looking "CAS" designation after his name, which just means he's been around imprinted stuff a long long time, and has taken a truly mind-boggling array of industry classes. Then he took a test to prove it.

Don never usually speaks in the 3rd person, and has no idea why he's doing it here.

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