What Are The Most Popular Branded Items To Give Customers?

As we're sure you're aware, this week is the British Promotional Merchandise Association's Promotional Products Week. That's right, we've got a whole week dedicated to our industry! Total Merchandise are Charter Associates of The BPMA which means you can buy from us and be sure of a quality product and service.

Ordering promotional products can require a lot of thought in terms of the brand exposure you could gain. You need to think hard about what your customer wants from an item you're giving away, and what you want to achieve from handing it to them.

This consideration for your customer can be helped along by keeping up with BPMA statistics and research from other sources. The BPMA and us here at Total Merchandise are always doing research on what type of products people want, and which products have been their favourite to receive. Other research includes what effect promotional merchandise has on people's emotions. We've trawled through all these findings so you don't have to, and here are some questions that were asked.

What's your favourite promotional product you've received?

If you've looked at the Total Merchandise catalogue, you'll see there are thousands of items to choose from. This means it can be quite hard to settle on one strong item. In a BPMA study, a focus group were asked about their favourite promotional items they'd ever received. There was a huge variation in responses, with some of our favourites including an inflatable dinosaur and a bar of chocolate.

According to our research, some of the best promotional items are useful and one of the most popular items ever is USB flash drives. We've got a huge range available in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

Edible items are also very popular for us and we've got all sorts from chocolate to candy canes.

Does promotional merchandise encourage people to switch brands?

When asked by the BPMA, 29% of customers were encouraged to switch products or service providers due to promotional merchandise. This means that almost a third of consumers could be converted to your brand by a simple branded item give away.

Why do marketers use promotional products?

The BPMA have not just targeted consumers with their research, marketers have also been questioned about their spending habits and why they buy promotional items. Senior marketers explained that branded merchandise is a great tool for marketing. Reasons for this included: