If you haven’t already contacted your Long Island print shop like Viking about creating printed promotional items for your business, you are costing yourself money! Printed products are one of the best, affordable and effective types of advertising that exist.
To understand how printed products benefit your business, let’s look at two acronyms – CPI and ROI.
CPI stands for Cost Per Impression. It’s a way for you to calculate how much exposure you get from each bit of advertising you do. If you send out a 1,000 direct mail postcards, and the total cost is $100, and you assume each postcard is seen at least by the person you addressed it to, then your CPI is 10 cents each.
ROI stands for Return On Investment. It’s basically a way to understand how much you make back on every dollar you spent. If you spend $100 on an advertising campaign, and you sell $500 worth of products, your ROI is 400%.
Printed promotional items have a lower CPI than direct mail, because each item is liable to be seen by many people multiple times. If you spend $5 on a tee shirt which you then give away, and the recipient wears it 10 times over the course of the next 6 months, and each time they wear it 10 people see them, you’ve achieved 100 impressions for just 5 cents each.
Research shows that it can take up to 8-15 times of seeing a company logo or brand name before it sinks in enough to influence a person’s buying decisions. Using items with a low CPI can result in a high ROI, because the promotional items keep your company at the top of the person’s “mental list” and when they need a product or service in your industry you will be the familiar name they choose to do business with.
Shirts are only one item on the promotional printed products catalog. Coffee mugs are another terrific way to promote your brand, as are pens and pencils, key rings, lanyards and wallet calendars. Items that get regular use in public increase the chances of them being seen by others than just the recipient, and increase the reach of your marketing campaign.
Have an item in mind that is perfect for your target demographic? Ask your Long Island printer if they can customize it for you – and if they have recommendations for products that will stand up to use. An item that breaks right out of the box doesn’t inspire confidence in your company.
When you do order your custom printed promotional products, make sure you follow through and get them into the hands of your customers and employees. Otherwise they are just an expense sitting in a box, and you lose your potential ROI!