The Ultimate Checklist for Promotional Products

By: Ashlee McNicol

Promotional products are one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways for businesses to create instant brand recognition and increase product awareness.

In fact, nearly 80 percent of consumers research a brand after receiving a promotional product, skyrocketing a business’s possibility for leads.

To improve your results when ordering your next promotional products, follow these simple guidelines:

1. What promotional products would best fit your business?

A well-planned item that correlates your brand with an event or marketing campaign can stay with your customers for months, even years. SmithPrint offers a variety of eye-catching promotional products, such as tote bags, Power Bank chargers, adult and children’s coloring books, and more.

Consider the following before ordering:

Branding: Do your promotional products need to reflect brand cornerstones such as power, durability, or luxury? Does the product make sense for your business?
Audience: What demographic are you looking to reach?

2. What colors would you like included?

90 percent of consumers recognize the branding of promotional products through elements such as color. Choose colors that reflect your company branding to help the promotional products resonate better with customers.

Here are some quick pointers:

Use consistent colors for branding.
Coordinate colors with applicable images.
Consult the color wheel, if necessary.

3. Have you provided vector art and other quality graphics?

It’s important not to submit low-resolution images that you pull from your website when creating promotional products. Instead, use high-quality vector art, digital graphics that allow you to resize your images without distorting them.

These may include:

Your business logo
Stock background photos
Special typography

4. What type of imprint do you need?

A variety of imprints are available for promotional products, including embroidery, dye sublimation, and more.

Here are two more top options:

Silk Screen One-Color Imprint: In this process, the colors are printed as solid areas and used when fewer than four colors are needed or when the four-color process (CMYK) is unable to accurately reproduce a PMS color. The spot colors and a screen are used to apply the imagery and message to a promotional product.
Four-Color Process Full-Color Imprint: This is the process of combining four basic colors (CMYK) to create a printed color picture of colors composed from the basic four colors. It allows for colored images to maintain quality when printed.

5. What else is important for promotional products?

Many promotional products have a minimum order quantity. Keep this in mind as you order, and specify the quantity you need based on how you intend to use them.

It’s also important to think about:

How you will use the promotional products (e.g. new customer incentives, existing customer appreciation products, trade show giveaways, etc.)
Specific marketing objectives
Seasonal considerations
Sizes (if applicable)
Deadlines and other requests