Whats the most requested promotional item? Pens and cups.

What item, in your opinion, offers the best ROI for the money? It is not about the particular item that offers a great ROI, it is selecting the right promotional product to enhance your marketing message. Also, how the merchandise is used in a promotional campaign can make all the difference in ROIand tracking, as well. If you want to increase traffic to your website for an event, then create a quick survey that visitors can fill out in order to give you some valuable information. Then, design the marketing effort to offer a free gift with each completed survey. You then have tangible data of increased flow to your webpage based on a giveaway campaign.

What are the current trendiest items? For many reasons, imprinted USB flashdrives have huge market appeal. Everyone has files that they need access to, and the flashdrives are attractive to just about all age groups.

What do you see as upcoming trends? Are there any? Larger amounts of advertising dollars are being allocated to promotional products for many reasons, one of which is the results of independent surveys. The effectiveness of logo recall, message recall and the length of time a recipient keeps the giveaway are astoundingly in favor of branding via promotional merchandise. (Per a Counselor magazine survey, November 2004, found on www.asicentral.com.)

Whats the most interesting item youve sold or had a request for? That is hard because we are always coming up with strange and unusual products. I always find it interesting when the item, say a bag, is custom-designed with an overall color-on-color, screened back imprint, with three large, colorful, embroidered logos and then a personalization. The decoration now costs twice as much as the bag, but if that is what the client wants, we can make it!

Dale Kirby, director of marketing
Promopeddler.com (asi/300367)
blog.promopeddler.com