Create Measurable Results with Promotional Products

Knowing the return on investment (ROI) of any marketing campaign is extremely important. It allows you to determine the profitability of your efforts and make decisions for the future on what to continue, what to stop and what changes to make in order to best allocate every marketing dollar.

Promotional products have a higher ROI than most other forms of advertising. Often in the industry you hear people refer to the biggest benefit of promotional items as the incredibly low cost per impression. This refers to the cost of the product divided by the average number of people who will see it over the course of the product's life. While this metric is valuable, it is only a small piece of the puzzle in terms of judging the effectiveness of a campaign. While it's true that the more people who see the product the better, what you really want to know is how those views influenced your target audience. You want to measure how much new business your giveaway generated, and promotional products offer a number of opportunities to do this.

Choosing products that utilize coupons or promotional codes are a great way to track results. They make it easy to calculate how many sales result from any type of promotion involving a discount or special offer. There are many products that can easily incorporate coupons, or you can print your promotional code directly on any giveaway.

Another effective way to track results is by linking to a webpage created exclusively for your campaign. Creating a unique URL does not require purchasing one - you can simply create a folder or a sub-domain of a URL your business already owns. Directing customers to a specific webpage allows you to track not only how many recipients come to the page, but who they are, how long they stay and what they click while on your website. This information gives any marketer valuable insight as to what content users find engaging.

The same can be done with campaign-specific phone numbers. By setting up a phone number that is only published on marketing materials for your current promotion, you can track how many calls you get, the duration of the call, the caller ID, etc. When you know where leads come from, you can also easily calculate the number that convert to sales.

QR codes are another great way to track ROI. Printing a QR code on your promotional products or other marketing materials not only gives customers & prospects an easy way to act on your offer, but it also gives you an effective way to track the response rate. Similarly to printing a campaign-specific website on a product, you will want to create a special URL for your QR code so that traffic results can be segmented and viewed in Google Analytics. Just be sure to use a URL shortener, which will prevent your QR code from being too big to be printed on promotional products, which often have a limited imprint area.

If you are looking to calculate ROI for an event-specific campaign, such as increasing tradeshow booth attendance, doing a direct mailing prior to the event creates great opportunities to track the return in a few different ways. If you advertise a giveaway for a fun or useful promotional product in your direct mail materials, you can evaluate how many products were given away compared to prior years as well as the overall booth attendance. By advertising an entry to a sweepstakes drawing for everyone who brings their direct mail piece with them to your booth, you can just count the number of people who responded directly.

According to the Global Advertising Specialties Impressions Study V.3, which interviewed nearly 5,000 consumers in 12 cities from July through September of 2012, consumers keep promotional products on average for 6 months. When calculating ROI from campaigns involving promotional products, be sure to wait the average lifespan of the product before making your final conclusions, unless you put a cap on the length of time recipients are given to act.

Utilizing any of these concrete and quantifiable tactics will help ensure that every marketing dollar is spent wisely. Consult your promotional products distributor for ideas on what products will fit best into your campaign and provide an opportunity to create measurable results.