The Cumulative Effect of Specialty Advertising

The most cost effective way to keep the company brand in front of your target audience is through the use of specialty advertising. Moreover, an economic recession is the best time to invest your marketing dollars in this valuable and diverse advertising tool. Promotional products help improve and strengthen your brand equity at a fraction of the cost of other advertising methods. As you will see from the conclusions found in this recent study, your return-on-investment is far greater when your marketing budget is spent on specialty advertising. But simply placing your logo on an item does not ensure higher sales or stronger audience appeal. You need to partner with a promotional marketing specialist who becomes an extension of your marketing team; helping to customize the right promotional product or logo apparel to fit your brand image or event marketing requirement. Their primary goal should be to help make the process easier; from concept to completed project, helping select the right product within budget while accurately managing the details and delivering measurable results. This study reveals the extensive value of specialty advertising. But keep in mind that a promotional marketing specialist can help you convert this value into maximum visibility while delivering a positive and lasting impression of your enterprise.

Background:

In June and July of 2008, a team of interviewers surveyed 465 businesspeople in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia regarding promotional products they had received. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how advertising specialties influence end-users' purchasing decisions; determine the number of impressions of popular advertising specialties; and analyze the Cost Per Impression (CPI) of advertising specialties compared with other popular advertising media.
Further, during October 2008, an online panel survey was conducted among recipients of advertising specialties to augment the sample from the in-person interviews. Results have been combined in the report where appropriate. There were 213 completed Web based interviews, for a total of 618 completed surveys for this study. Respondents were asked if they had received any promotional products in the last 12 months. Most respondents were business/professional people (84%) and all were age 21 or older.

Summary of Conclusions:

• Instant recall: More than 8 out of 10 (84%) respondents remembered the advertisers of the promotional products they received.

• Very impressionable: 42% of respondents had a MORE favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving the item. And nearly a quarter (24%) said they are MORE likely to do business with the advertiser on the items they receive.

• It's all business: Most respondents (62%) have done business with the advertiser on a promotional product after receiving the item.

• Pens are in: Writing instruments are the most-recalled advertising specialty items (54% of respondents recall owning them), followed by shirts, caps and bags.

• User-friendly: The majority (81%) of promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.

• Staying power: More than three-quarters of respondents have had their items for more than 6 months.

• Bag it!: Among wearables, bags were reported to be used most frequently with respondents indicating that they used their bags an average of 9 times per month. They also deliver the most impressions: Each bag averages 1,038impressions per month.

• Most impressive: The average CPI of an advertising specialty item is $0.004; as a result, marketers get a more favorable return on investment from advertising specialties than nearly any other popular advertising media.

Sponsored By Advertising Specialty Institute. The full report is available upon request.

Editor: Bob Boggan, CMO and Partner at Mprinted.com, Inc. (http://www.mprinted.com/)