Do you give out promotional items?

Do you give out promotional items? If so, which ones?

No, but I'd be receptive to the idea with the write item.

Maybe we should come up with a list of best performing promotional items.

IMO, promotional items can be a great way of keeping your name in front of your target audience.

I also think these are best used with current clients versus potential clients.

Occassionally we might handout a polo shirt or coffee cup but in general "no" we do not give out promotional items.

Originally Posted by Jackie Occassionally we might handout a polo shirt or coffee cup but in general "no" we do not give out promotional items.

Same here... on occassion but not often.

Hmmm... it seems that handing out "promotional items" isn't as common as I might have thought.

At the moment, nothing really. I can't really think of anything, and also I can't think of any potential benefit.

Promotional items such as corporate apparrel make excellent business gifts.

IMO, you should be selective when handing out promotional items. Like Houston said, these are best used with current clients versus just anybody and/or potential clients.

As for the potential benefit... my objective of handing out promotional items would be to keep my name in front of my clients which will help to promote repeat and referral business.

Just yesterday I was doing a walk through on a pre-owned home we had just helped our client sell. Guess what was sitting on the kitchen counter. Two (2) promotional note pads from another real estate company. I might point out that this is not the first time I have seen this.

What's my point? IMO, promotional items can be very helpful when you have an ongoing relationship with the client. However, without the relationship your "note pad" is just another "note pad".

This year, I gave out baseball schedule magnets with my business card on them to local business contacts, calendar magnets to those who ordered my book. Same line of thought as SalesGuy...to keep name, Website address, in front of people.

When I worked in the corporate world (consumer packaged goods), we kept various premiums for the sales people to give to key brokers and buyers to help build and continue those relationships.

We'd also sometimes run a promo nice golf shirts to wholesalers for a certain size tradeshow order. This helped drive short term sales (downside is it encouraged warehouse loading, which means longer time before next order).