5 Steps to Help You Measure the ROI of Your Promotional Products
Do You Measure the Effectiveness and ROI on Your Promotional Products?
By Robert Piller
Austin, Texas: Most of my clients have used promotional products for various events during the year: trade shows, employee events, Thank You gifts, recruitment tools and Holiday gifts being the most common uses.
But how many are actually measuring the ROI of these promotional products?
If you view your promotional product budget (or any other portion of your advertising and marketing budget) as merely an advertising expense or cost of doing business, you will not maximize its effectiveness and your reach.
About 100 years ago the famous line attributed to John Wanamaker was, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
In this day and age, you should be able to get a batter handle on your advertising- including promotional products — so that you can measure its ROI and determine which half is being wasted.
Here are five simple ways to measure the ROI of your promotional products:
1) Have a call to action. This can be ” Call us at…”, “Enter Promo code 123XYZ to register to win”, “Visit us at…”, ” Like us on Facebook…”,etc.
Ask these people to take some simple action step so that you can measure its effectiveness.
2) Have a unique url code or phone number printed on the promotional product. This is similar to having a custom landing page. If you use a special Google Phone number that is only advertised on the promotional item, then it makes it easy to measure calls. Same for a unique url. Google Analytics can easily tell you traffic counts and other details–giving you measurable results that can help you improve your ROI.
3) Run A/B Studies. Test various aspects of your promotional product campaign–including different messages, different imprint colors, different product colors, different promotional products, distribution plans (trade shows, handouts, direct mail), etc.
Test, test and the test again until you constantly improve your ROI on these promotional products. Don’t assume it is any one specific element until you can come up with proof.
4) Do a multi-part promotional program. We have had clients mail out headphone cases at trade shows with a note to bring these in at the up-coming trade show to receive the missing headphones.
Same with pairs of imprinted speakers. We would send out one speaker and ask the recipient to call their salesperson listed on the form to receive the missing pair on a follow up visit.
Multi-part promotions can get you measurable results that will boost your ROI.
5) Actually measure your ROI. Don’t forget to track and measure the effectiveness of your promotional products so that you can improve the results next time. It isn’t so much to measure the ROI just for measurement sake. It is only a useful metric if you are constantly tweaking your efforts to get you improved results from promotion to promotion.
You can consistently improve your ROI on your promotional product budget by following these five simple proven steps.
Happy Marketing!
