These days, small businesses look for every possible method to connect and interact with their target market. For them, the perfect solution for grabbing people’s attention seems to be merchandise marketing.
However, the key attribute of branded merchandise isn’t just to drive the attention of your potential customers. Even marketers have begun to realize the benefits merchandise marketing may offer, including the following:
- Boost customer loyalty: High-quality merchandise makes people feel valued, helping you win more loyalty.
- Foster emotional connection with customers: Quality merchandise makes people feel you care about them, making your brand more recognizable.
- Improve employee morale: Quality merchandise is a great way to commend your staff for their hard work.
Understanding how to create compelling branded merchandise is vital for promoting your brand’s personality, reinforcing its message, and establishing its resonance. This post will discuss how to develop a great branded merchandise strategy.
What Is Branded Merchandise?
According to Steel City Marketing, any item with a logo printed on it can be a piece of branded merchandise, including static items like banners, or active items like logo printed footballs.
Branded merchandise is also referred to as a promotional product, which customers and employees often receive at no extra cost from companies. Multinational companies sell branded merchandise in stores, online, and at their offices.
Hence, branded merchandise is a way to establish a deeper connection with your target market. Such a marketing campaign may help your brand foster positive and relevant customer interaction.
How To Use Branded Merchandise To Increase Brand Awareness?
Here are some tips that may help you develop a compelling branded merchandise strategy that can help increase your brand awareness:
1. Understand Your Brand Identity
Brand identity refers to the elements of a brand and how a company wants to be recognized by its target audience. The primary goal of brand identity is to help a business be unique through its own design, personality, and outlook.
Understanding your brand identity is an essential step in producing effective branded merchandise. You want your promotional products to stay aligned with your brand identity.
Here are some brand elements you need to examine to understand your brand identity better.
- Logo: This element identifies your offering and can be a text, a symbol, or a combination of both.
- Color Palette: This is a set of colors found in most marketing materials and is also evident in the logo.
- Imagery: A brand can also convey the message it wants to deliver through relevant images and visual aids.
- Tagline: This is the message of a brand. A short but memorable tagline can effectively describe a brand.
- Voice: This non-visual element refers to the values and attitude of a brand, which is used to reach its audience.
- Association: This includes partner companies and influencers people may associate with a brand.
- Personality: Like voice, personality is a non-visual element that a brand replicates when engaging with customers.
Knowing these vital brand elements may help you develop quality merchandise that aligns with your customers and echoes your brand.
2. Plan Everything Beforehand
Before creating your promotional products, you need to be well prepared. This means you’re aware of your target customers and what you want to achieve from your merchandise.
Determine how you can achieve your goals in a specific timeframe. Be clear about your budget and ensure your proposed merchandise will also help your business succeed. Overall, your merchandise marketing strategy should be well thought out.
3. Pick The Right Merchandise
First of all, make sure the merchandise you sell is something your target customers will enjoy using. For example, you may produce bags that are used every day or water bottles that people take with them when they go running or hiking.
Moreover, consider its functionality. If people don’t find your merchandise useful, they might not buy it, no matter how decorative it is.
Choosing high-value merchandise ensures your target audience will use your product as often as possible. This increases the likelihood of your items becoming a part of their daily lives, leading to higher impressions and positive brand recognition.
4. Choose Quality Over Quantity
It is important for a product to be of high quality. Your company’s image may depend on the quality you put forth. So if it isn’t up to standard, then maybe it’s not worth putting your name on.
If you make branded merchandise, go for quality over price. While cheaper products can help save money in the long run, they also risk damaging your brand’s reputation if those items don’t stand up to expectations or wear out quickly.
This is why successful businesses work with experts to improve and maintain the quality of their branded merchandise. It helps companies maximize exposure through their items, despite having fewer merch.
5. Create A Simple Design
When designing branded merchandise, starters often consider adding various elements to make their items more unique. Unfortunately, it only puts customers off, as it makes the design more cluttered and the message unclear.
Instead of adding more design elements, resist the urge and keep your merch as simple as possible. Get rid of your company address, telephone number, website, and other unnecessary objects. A plain logo and an extra visual may be enough to make an impact on your customers.
6. Consult An Expert
If this is your first time creating promotional products, consider working with an expert who can guide you throughout the process. This will help you prevent wasting time, money, and energy on something that’ll likely fail.
When you work with an expert, you’ll have someone who can validate your thoughts for developing promotional products. Also, you’ll have access to professional advice, ensuring your budget will only be spent on concepts that work.
However, you want to ensure you’re working with an expert who can understand your needs and is willing to collaborate with you in the long run. This way, they’ll be able to optimize your returns on investment (ROI) on branded merchandise.
Final Thoughts
Branded merchandise, or promotional products, is any item with a logo printed on it. Its goal is to promote awareness so people can recognize your brand in one look. To do this properly, follow the tips discussed above. If you need help developing a promotional product for your company, don’t hesitate to seek an expert’s advice.
