At some point in time, most businesses will want to create some sort of promotional product to give away to their customers or even their own employees. Some businesses do an excellent job with this, many seem to miss the point however, doing the bare minimum without much thought; looking like an executive somewhere has written this potentially useful branding exercise as a necessary expense to solve as cheaply as possible.
Here are some of the reasons why real estate agents like using promotional items (also known as promo items or swag) for marketing purposes:
Over the years people will collect all sorts of miscellaneous items with corporate branding on it. Every industry expo or careers fair will be full of people giving away their pens, hats, badges, frisbees, USB sticks and more pens. But how much of these things will people actually keep and use? Will they remember your brand?
According to research by the Australasian Promotional Products Association (APPA) 52% of recipients say their impression of the company is more positive after receiving a promotional product, 76% recall the name advertised on the product and 52% of people do business with a company after receiving a promotional product.
Some of the promotional items you get may actually become something you keep for a long time. The APPA says 55% keep the item for more than one year. Do you have a promotional item you have kept and use on a regular basis? The APPA says nearly 50% of recipients use them daily. Perhaps you have a pair of spare promo sunglasses you pull out in emergencies, a bottle opener, USB stick or a pen at your desk?
When choosing a promotional item to represent your company, you have to ask yourself “is this is an item I’d actually want to receive?”. You also have to make sure the item is relevant to your audience or makes sense in the context you’re giving them away.
Promotional pens for marketing purposes are by far the most common free giveaway. Everyone likes pens, everyone uses pens so if you’re giving them away, why not make sure you’re giving away the decent ones? When people attend a convention and get given a pen at every few stands, they won’t be keeping all of them and certainly won’t be using all of them. You need to make sure yours stands out so when someone gets home and sorts through all their promotional products, that they actually keep yours. The super cheap, flimsy pens probably won’t cut it for most people, but a nice solid plastic or metal one will end up getting used. These obviously cost more, but a quality product people may want to keep will be remembered longer than something that may not even make it home from the event.
If you have an event where the likelihood of other people giving away free pens is low, cheap promotional pens will have a chance to stand out because they will be useful. Eg. If you are sponsoring or speaking at a conference, a branded pen and branded notebook could be something useful people will hold onto (for that day at least).
If you are hosting an open house, free pens and notepads would be useful for the visitors to write down their notes about the property, they may continue to use that notepad for further house-hunting notes as they travel to other open house inspections.
“I used to attend a conference once a year in Las Vegas, which has a very different climate to suburban Australia. This conference attracted people from all over the world, most of which were not prepared for the dry desert air. There are always a lot of neat promotional items at this event and one time a company was giving away free chapsticks. In those conditions, it was very easy for your lips to dry out, crack and even bleed, this booth became an essential visit and in exchange for your email address, you got a life saving lip balm. This company really thought about the location of the conference and chose a product that people would actually want and would go out of their way to track down. If someone complained their lips were drying out, another patron would tell them to go see that company’s stall for a free lip balm. The word of mouth for this was great and must have helped them get a lot more leads than they would have otherwise.” – Keith Nallawalla, content marketer.
“At another conference in Singapore a company was giving away travel power adapters in exchange for your business card. This was a week long conference with 34,000 attendees from all over the world. This booth was run by a big computer manufacturer, so they obviously had a huge budget for this as these items would have cost a few dollars each to produce, knowing how many overseas visitors were attending, they definitely chose an appropriate product, one that could even be used with their own products, such as laptops.” – Keith Nallawalla (continued)
“Again in Las Vegas, a company was giving out business card sized metal bottle openers that could fit in a wallet. I liked this so much I grabbed two. I’ve never been caught at a BBQ or party without a bottle opener since. The brand is not one I’m familiar with, but I still carry this item with me every day.” – Keith Nallawalla (continued)
The promotional items people really keep are ones that are useful, things that are too good to throw out. Here’s some that might be useful for real estate brands.
Next time you are considering a promo item for your real estate marketing campaign, please ensure you think carefully before choosing a product and choose something you think will return the best ROI.