A handy guide and reasons to buy promotional merchandise

Many of our customers here at Promotif are skilled and well-informed marketing professionals; so we’re not here to try and teach your grandmother to suck eggs!

If you already know the amazing benefits of adding branded merchandise to your marketing mix then this section perhaps isn’t for you, but if you’re new to the world of ‘merch’ then maybe a few headline stats may be quite enlightening (and if you’d like more in depth research findings then please just get in touch with us).

Promotional merchandise is one of the oldest forms of advertising and should play an integral part in any marketing communication. A physical product, with your logo or message on, not only helps put your brand front and centre of a customer’s mind, in a long-lasting and memorable way, but is also the only form of advertising where the recipient actually thanks you for giving it to them (it really is, think about it!).

Research from the BPMA has highlighted that:

96% of customers are more likely to buy from a company who has given them some branded merchandise.

75% of customers who receive branded merchandise are more likely to repeat purchase.

80% of customers that receive branded merchandise are more likely to recommend your brand or service.

With this in mind you can use promotional merchandise to:

INSPIRE – promotional products which are useful and desirable are reused and often retained for years. Your brand will remain fresh and relevant to your customers with ongoing positive reminders to use your products or services again.

CONNECT – there are a whole host of innovative, sustainable, useful and delicious ways to connect with your employees, existing clients and potential customers through the creative use of branded merchandise.

EDUCATE – your brand and message can be used on a whole host of different merchandise types that can be seen by hundreds of people every day; allowing you to not only get your message across straight away, but through a medium that will last.

To help give you an idea of what companies actually use 'merch' for, the most recent research from the British Promotional Merchandise Association about the main use for promotional merchandise is that: 57% of companies use it for customer recognition, 57% use it for trade show give-aways, 47% use it as a sales incentive, 41% use it for employee engagement and 11% suggested ‘other’ uses (loyalty programmes, online shops, etc.).

In terms of which groups of products are currently the most popular; statistics from the UK’s most widely used merchandise sourcing platform has the following Themed Groups of promotional products as the top ten (as at November 2023):

1. Eco-friendly ideas
2. Exhibition giveaways
3. Desk gifts
4. Drink related
5. Travel related
6. Pocket gifts
7. Concerts & festivals
8. Children’s gifts
9. Beach BBQ & picnic
10. Olympics

The ten most popular Product Groups, by spend, are:

1. Bags
2. Pens & Pencils
3. Mugs
4. Sports bottles
5. Plastic giveaways
6. Confectionary
7. Clothing
8. Keyrings
9. USB accessories
10. Paper pads

So, for the most effective use of branded merchandise it’s not necessarily a case of reinventing the wheel or needing to find the ‘next new exciting thing’ (many of the products are perennial favourites); it’s really about choosing the right product mix for your market, ensuring that they are the best quality possible, branding the items creatively (having them colour matched, for example) and distirbuting them in the appropriate environment.

IF YOU NEED HELP WITH ANY OF THAT, THEN GIVE US A CALL ... IT'S WHAT WE DO!