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Magnetic Marketing
By Eric Young
In a culture that so often promotes immediate gratification it sometimes
goes unrealized that there are beneficial, cost effective alternatives
to instant results. This fact also undoubtedly applies to the world of
marketing and advertising. A perfect example of how the virtue of
patience can pay off is with the use of promotional magnets.
All promotional products should be distributed with the assumption that,
although your prospective customer does not need your product or service
at that moment, the need for what you offer will someday arise. Knowing
this, you give away a free promotional item with your company
information emblazoned upon it. If the promotional item performs a
useful function for your prospect it is more likely that they will hold
onto it. One day, when their computer crashes and they notice their
familiar ABC Computer Repair coffee mug staring back at them, the
investment pays off.
The preceding example may seem like an oversimplification, but it really
isn’t. The complicated part about planning a promotional campaign is
finding an effective, functional promotional item that is within your
budget. Some companies can’t afford to print up the amount of coffee
cups that would yield a significant ROI (return on investment) so they
might opt for something less expensive like a keychain or promotional
pen. These items are okay, but they do have significant shortcomings.
For example, most people are not going to replace their current keychain
with the cheap, soft plastic model that most promotional companies
offer. Although this item is functional it is not highly desirable. The
promotional pen is a good idea, but its efficiency is limited because of
its short functionality period. In other words, once the ink runs out
the pen gets thrown in the trash along with your company’s message.
On the other end of the spectrum there is the promotional magnet. This
item is an anomaly because it actually doesn’t serve much of a function
except that it sticks to metal! For whatever reason, people are
amazingly prone to grabbing a magnet and sticking it on the
refrigerator, file cabinet or other appropriate surface. It can perform
the function of holding up some important papers, but it doesn’t even
have to in order to be desirable. That’s one of the attributes that’s so
great about them. Another benefit of using magnets as a promotional tool
is that they are inexpensive to produce as compared to a coffee mug or
calendar. Once the magnet is placed it rarely is moved. This helps to
reinforce your company’s message in your prospect’s sub-conscious until
your product or service is needed.
If you’re a small company with limited resources don’t gamble away your
advertising budget with hit or miss campaigns like newspaper ads or
radio commercials. These types of advertising efforts, by virtue of
their temporal format and placement, can be high risk investments.
Instead, consider investing some of that money into a more long term
approach like the production and distribution of efficient and cost
effective promotional items like custom promotional magnets.
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