Social Media Tools and Promotional Products: Exponentially Increase Effectiveness by Uniting Promotional Tactics

While promotional products alone are effective in introducing a consumer to service or brand, the benefits increase substantially when the item is combined with another promotional tactic, such as social media.

Social media and promotional products: the planning stage.

People often jump into new marketing efforts without first understanding how they want to use the medium. This isn't always a bad thing -- I didn't understand Twitter at all until I started using it, and now I think it's impossible for someone who's never used Twitter to really get its marketing benefits. Since social media is largely an experiment right now, jumping in and figuring it out as you go along actually works pretty well. Chances are you'll spend as much time already in social media as you would attempting to research and plan it beforehand.

Jumping into promotional products, however, can prove a bit more costly. You don't want to wind up stuck with 700 yellow koozies before you decide that, actually, you want your company's brand is much more unique than the koozie crowd. So it's important to decide beforehand how your promotional products will work for you. What consistent color or colors will you use for all your branding efforts? Are you happy enough with your current logo to see it on hundreds of promotional products? Will you use a smaller amount of more valuable promotional products to win the loyalty of VIP customers, or will you purchase lots of less expensive promotional products to appeal to the widest audience possible? In short, whom do you want your promotional products to influence?

Promotional products do have some similarities with social media in the planning phases. Glimmer Site had a great article about "why small actions are more important than big plans." At some point, you've just got to get started. There's a light bulb moment when you have to stop playing it safe, wasting time by planning too much, and gun it. Step on the accelerator and get going. Great marketing doesn't happen in the planning stages, but in the doing.

Social media and promotional products: different medium, same message.

Much of what you'll be doing in the planning stages of marketing is determining what your brand is. Craig Johnson of the branding house Matchstic says, "The willingness to say no will define you more than the willingness to say yes." Determining who you're not helps you arrive at who you are.

Promotional products should say something about your brand -- maybe only one thing. Because when you try to say everything you end up saying nothing.

Social media is the same way. In order to succeed on Twitter and in the blogging community, you need to make a name for your brand as a specialist in a certain field.

Not only should promotional products and social media both deliver a message about your brand; they should deliver the same message. All-Ways Advertising, where I work, “The right product for the right reason." We reiterate this message on our own promotional products, on the phone -- where friendly, bright sales reps are eager to help, in our emails, on our promotional products website, and in our social media. A consistent message both proves the integrity of your brand and hammers home who you are to customers.