Jeremy Chen
The Real Cost of a Branded Promotional Product Marketing Campaign
Every year, companies globally spend close to $23 Billion on promotional products. The promotional product industry is massive and is showing no signs of slowing down.
If you’re thinking about investing in a branded promotional product campaign, you need to carefully consider your marketing spend how much it will cost to achieve your goals. Just like any marketing campaign needs investment, branded promotional product campaigns have costs associated and having clear objectives and a budget is crucial.
The cost of promotional product marketing campaigns usually depend on various factors, such as:
- The quality and quantity of branded promotional products you’re considering.
- Your distribution strategy.
- Frequency of your branded promotional product campaigns.
- Monitoring the performance of your branded promotional products.
- The size of your order.
- The complexity of design of your branded promotional products, and how you’d like your logo imprinted on them.
In this article we’re going to look at each of these factors to give you a clear insight into exactly how much your branded promotional product marketing campaign is likely to cost. You’ll learn how to budget for your campaigns, and plan your marketing investment smartly.
So let’s dive into it!
Cost Determinant 1: Quality & Quantity Of Branded Promotional Products
The higher the quality of your branded promotional products, the higher your campaign will cost. Similarly, the more the quantity of your branded promotional products, the more it will cost.
Higher quality promotional products are made of more durable materials and as such will usually last longer. Cheaper promotional products are made of lower grade plastics and materials, and are designed with fewer or even single use applications in mind. It’s important you choose the level of quality based on the type of perception you want to create in your consumer’s mind as well as the longevity of the product in question
You should decide the quantity of your promotional products based on the number of people you’re likely to distribute it to. For instance, if you’re going to a trade show that is expecting 10,000 people to attend it, you should estimate how many of these are going to visit your stall, so you order enough to never run out.
The cost of promotional products can vary across the board. From pens that cost lower than $0.50 to bluetooth speakers that cost anywhere between $15 – $100, it’s impossible to generalise the cost. The important thing is to know your budget beforehand, so you can spread it across the mix of products you’re intending to distribute appropriately.
Cost Determinant 2: Your Distribution Strategy
The cost of your branded promotional product campaign has a lot to do with your distribution strategy. The higher your distribution cost is, the higher the cost of your branded promotional product campaign.
If you’re planning on distributing the products at a tradeshow you’ve already paid for, you have to factor in the cost of your branded promotional products within your overall investment in the trade show. If you’re planning to mail out your branded promotional products to your customers, along with a personalized note, you need to count the mailing cost in. If you distribute your promotional products at your office or retail store when your customers walk in, the cost is a lot lower.
We would recommend evaluating your distribution strategy thoroughly, even before considering investing in the branded promotional products themselves. There’s no point purchasing branded promotional products if they’re not going to cost effectively get into the hands of your customers!
Cost Determinant 3: The Frequency Of Your Campaigns
Depending on how often you’re planning to conduct your branded product marketing campaign, your annual cost will be revealed. Usually, from an accounting context, you’d budget for branded promotional product marketing campaigns as part of an ‘annual marketing budget’ in most companies. So if you run a $10K campaign 5 times a year, your cost will be $50K for the year.
So it’s important you actually estimate the following:
- The number of events you’re planning on attending in the upcoming year.
- The number of new customers you’re aiming to win.
- The lifetime value of a customer, which will help you decide your ideal investment per promotional product.
- Any other distribution outlets for promotional products which may influence the frequency of your campaigns.
These are just some of the factors that will help you determine the best path forward from a costing context.
Cost Determinant 4: Monitoring Your Branded Promotional Product Campaign
Your cost doesn’t just end at purchasing and distributing branded promotional products. In order to know how effective your campaign has been, you’ll need to monitor the number of impressions, leads and contacts generated from your branded promotional product campaign.
While the ROI may not always be quantifiable, some aspects of your campaign will be easy to measure. For instance, all your branded ppromotional roducts could have a special phone number you can track to trace the number of leads or calls generated from distributing the products. This is a great way to evaluate if you should re-invest in the same branded products and distribution channels, or reinvent the campaign. The golden rule here is to ‘do more of what’s working and eliminate or change the rest’.
Now to monitor a campaign takes time and effort. It also takes smarts and analytical skills. There may be aspects of monitoring your campaign you can automate, but there are always going to be aspects of monitoring the campaign which require time. Ensure you factor in the amount of time you will take to monitor the campaign, who will monitor it, what their hourly rate is, and allocate it to your branded promotional product campaign.
Of course this approach to costing is super granular, unless you’re already paying staff regularly to help you with this. If you’ve already got full time staff and don’t need to invest any more money into monitoring your branded promotional product campaign, then a separate ‘wages & salaries’ cost estimate would suffice.
Cost Determinant 5: The Size of Your Order
The great thing about branded promotional product marketing campaigns is that they give you the benefit of economies of scale. Your total cost per branded promotional product will be a lot lower if you order 100,000 of them, compared to ordering only a 100.
It’s best to talk to us about the quantity of promotional items you’re thinking of ordering, so we can work out the best deal for you to make it financially appealing.
Cost Determinant 6: Complexity of Design Of Branded Promotional Products & How You Imprint Your Logo On Them
The process we follow for creating the best promotional products is to understand your product concept, then design it, and finally, deliver the product.
Now the more complex your product design is, the more time it will take on our part to design it, and also work out the best way of manufacturing and delivering it. Clearly, the simpler your product design is, the lower the cost will be, and the more complex the design is, the higher the cost will be.
It’s not just about the design of your product, it’s also about how you’re wanting your logo to be imprinted on it. For instance, some customers we work with want us to ‘engrave’ the logo onto the product, while others prefer to print it on the product. The style of imprinting your logo will have a big impact on the final cost of your branded product campaign.
To Sum It Up..
Even though promotional products can cost anywhere from less than $1 to more than $1000, the average cost of a promotional product is about $1. More importantly, given that the cost per impression (CPI) of promotional products is just 3 cents, the cost of your branded promotional product marketing campaign is likely to be pale in comparison to the benefits that accrue to you.
Reach out to Good Things to explore how we can help with your promotional product needs.
