There is something special about promotional items, however, that bear the name of your eBay account or your eBay store, and if you’re selling enough volume (whether in dollars or in sales) to be thinking in terms of making investments in marketing to drive repeat sales, custom promotional items are one category of goods to think about.
Finding Manufacturers of Promotional Items
Most of the time if you’re thinking about promotional items, you’re thinking in terms of inexpensive goods that can be emblazoned with your logo and eBay (and/or web) store name and address. There are a number of ways to locate a supplier for such items if you don’t currently use promotional goods, but perhaps the easiest in today’s world is simply to use an online supplier.- Search Google or another search engine for “custom promotional goods,” for example, to find a long list of suppliers that can deliver a wide variety of custom items. Such suppliers include A Promotional Outlet, LLC, 4 Imprint USA, LeaderPromos.com, and Paragon Promotions, amongst many, many others.
- For smaller quantities promotional goods may or make not make sense depending on the market to which you’re selling, the types of goods you sell, and your chances of establishing a repeat buying base. If smaller quantities are needed, you may consider using more expensive and limited options like Cafepress, Printfection, or Zazzle.
There may also be providers of promotional items in your local area; one of the easiest ways to locate them apart from using your yellow pages is simply to ask local businesses where they produce their refrigerator magnets, complimentary calendars, etc.—word of mouth can also be a great way to find a supplier for promotional goods.
Things to Think About
There are several things to keep in mind when deciding to use promotional goods for your business, each of them equally important.- Promotional goods don’t help everyone. Promotional goods are expensive in comparison to many other marketing techniques or even in comparison to jellybeans. You should think about promotional goods only under the following circumstances: first, a reasonable expectation that any of your customers may become a regular repeat buyer of your products, and second, probability of repeat buys and high enough margins that you will likely earn more over the course of your relationship with a buyer for having invested in them the cost of a promotional item than you would have otherwise.
- Quality matters. Promotional goods that are no good don’t help you at all. For this reason, it’s a good idea to get a sample of any product that you plan to use for promotional purposes. It’s also a good idea to verify the quality of the imprint and to make sure that any graphics that you design yourself look professional and readable when printed on the good(s) in question.
- The promotion is only as good as the information. Just having the name of your business is likely not enough to drive repeat sales. Use your promotional items to tell customers how to find you again—not “Joe’s Socks” but rather “Joe’s Socks — http://stores.ebay.com/JoesSocks” so that customers can use your promotional item to find your store and buy once more.
- Useful or related promotional items can drive sales better. Most promotional items are useful to some extent, but the types of promotional items that are likely to serve you best are those that relate in some way to the type of purchases that customers can make from you. Pens and pencils are fine for office-related equipment, consumables, and furniture, but for sporting goods consider promotional watter bottles, for home improvement goods inexpensive promotional screwdrivers or mini-measuring tapes, etc.
- It may not help in the end. If you’re trying out promotional gifts for the first time, don’t begin by buying in massive quantities. Send out promotional gifts only for the next 250 or 500 sales and see whether they’re able to drive repeat sales for you, in your market segment. Only when you know that it works is it a smart idea to invest in a much larger quantity for the long haul.
