When you need to promote your business, you must spend money on promotional materials. However, the results that you get from these materials depends on how smart your products are. There are items that may never even see the light of day because they would no longer be useful for the target market.
Suppliers of promotional merchandise need to adjust their product line to those that would fit the modern office worker. You have to study the profile because the students of today do not have to use the same items like those used five or ten years ago.
Replace Paperweights with Desktop Toys or Puzzles
These days, there is a movement to have paperless business operations. This is in response to the call for more eco-friendly offices. In these setups, they would have the memorandums sent through email, along with further correspondence. This will keep paper printing to a minimum. When that happens, what do they need a paperweight for? It will just be useless clutter on the desks. The workers might throw it away and the promotional value will go with it.
Instead of a paperweight, you can give desktop toys or puzzles—there are those that are specifically designed and packaged as “stress relieving toys.” It can serve as a momentary distraction or a respite from a busy and tiring day. It should also be easy on the eyes, so the employees can display it for aesthetic value.
Replace Plain Ink Pens with Stylus Pens
As the offices become paperless, there is also little use for the ink pen. Most office workers and even students no longer carry pen and paper notebooks when attending a class, lecture, or seminar. They bring along laptops or tablets. When your promotional item is related to the papers that they are phasing out, then your item will also be left in the farther recesses of their bags.
The stylus will be handy when they need to highlight the notes they took on their laptop, or if they need to make a quick diagram or sketch. You can be sure that they will bring it along whenever they use their gadget.
Replace Any CD-related Items with a USB Flash Drive
Speaking of phasing out, the revered compact disc is on its last hurrah. The latest models of cars may not even have CD players anymore. Manufacturers of computers and laptops are sacrificing their CD drives to make their products thinner. You know where this is going, so why would you still give CD holders or CD cases as promotional items? What would your target customers use it for when all their music is stored on their smartphones or mp3 players?
There is another use for CDs and that is data storage. However, that role has also been taken by the USB Flash Drive. People just need a flash drive or two to store data that would otherwise be stored on tens of CDs.
A promotional item must be useful and beneficial for the recipient to keep it. If they discard it or keep it away without using it, the promotional value drops to zero. With these innovative items, the money spent on the items will have good mileage or a wider reach.
