
Promotional products for event marketing play a crucial role in representing your brand and making a lasting impression. When you invest time and resources into attending or hosting events, it’s essential that your target audience leave with something memorable. These products serve as both a reminder and a reflection of your brand. So, how can you stand out from your competitors? The key is to use promotional products for event marketing that align with your brand messaging, leaving your audience with a tangible connection to your business.
What is the Marketing Goal for the Event
When deciding what promotional products to give away at an event, consider the event’s marketing goals. Common objectives include recruiting employees, generating customer leads, or providing training for customers or staff. Understanding your goal will help guide the choice of products, ensuring that the right information is highlighted and that the keepsakes resonate with your audience.
Who is Your Target Audience?
Figuring out your target audience is a crucial factor in determining the right promotional items for your event. If your goal is to recruit new employees, consider the role, age range, and industry you’re recruiting for. For example, the items you choose for a college fair would likely differ from those selected for an industry-specific event. We have helped with thousands of events and have the knowledge to determine what products will resonate with your specific audience.
Case Study: A large construction company hires across all levels, from field workers on job sites to corporate office staff. By considering their geographic location and the positions they are recruiting for, we help determine the most effective promotional products. Since they attend a wide variety of recruitment events, they use interchangeable backdrops to tailor their messaging depending on the type of career fair. For corporate recruitment fairs, they offer desk items like coffee mugs, portfolios, and phone stands. For construction trade shows, they hand out practical items like measuring tapes, flashlights, and hats. This targeted approach ensures their promotional items resonate with the specific audience at each event.
What is Your Budget?
Your budget plays a key role in determining everything from the quantity and type of promotional products to how custom you can make them. Once you have a clear budget in place, we can help you find creative ways to make the most of it.
Case Study: HR hosts an onboarding event for new summer interns with a $30 per person budget. To maximize the budget, we suggest creating an onboarding kit to be handed out during the event. Distributing the kits at the event eliminated the need for individual shipping creating more room in the budget for products. The custom box includes a note printed inside from the CEO, a notebook, a pen, a sticker sheet, and a water bottle.
Is There a Theme?
Does your event, marketing strategy, or company have an overall theme? This is an important consideration when selecting promotional items for an event, as the right product can help reinforce the theme and create a more memorable experience.
Case Study: A company hosts a team-building and training event for its remote staff in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The theme of the event is “Our Teamwork is the Summit of Success,” with a focus on building stronger connections and communication among team members before returning to a fully remote work environment. To align with the theme, each employee receives a fleece jacket, a custom puzzle used during team-building activities, and a campfire mug filled with a smores kit for their stay.
These items are carefully chosen to reinforce the event’s key messages at strategic moments. Then, employees take these items home as a continual reminder of the event goals. The campfire mug serves as an everyday coffee cup, the puzzle can sit on their desk to remind them of the lesson on open communication, and the jacket is used during other events.
Follow-Up After the Event
After making connections at an event, the last thing you want is for potential clients or contacts to forget about you or, even worse, not know how to get in touch. So, how can you ensure you stay top of mind? Plan a follow-up mailout campaign about a week after the event.
Case Study: A company attending a trade show in a new industry collected 300 business cards from interested potential clients. They decide to send a follow-up mailout campaign to capitalize on this valuable contact information. Concerned that a simple postcard might get overlooked, we recommend using a small bubble mailer with a full-color design to make it stand out in the mailbox. Inside the package, they included the company’s business card, a microfiber cloth, and a coolie branded with messaging about the benefits of working with the company. By including a useful item, the company increases the chances of its message reaching the right person, and our clients have seen a noticeable boost in callbacks and engagement.