When it comes to promotion products, you gotta know what you’re doing or it could end up costing you a lot. Not only in terms of money, but in terms of brand damage. Or maybe brain damage, if you waste money AND do damage to your brand by giving away cheap, breakable SWAG.
Heidi Thorne aims to change all of that with her new book SWAG: How to Choose and Use Promotional Products for Marketing Your Business. (disclosure: Heidi is a tradeshow marketing online friend of mine and she offered me a review copy of the book for free).
It’s a brisk read – I went through it within an hour on a recent plan flight from Portland to Houston – and put together this review! And it’s packed full of useful, common-sense information designed to help anyone that’s intending to come up with the ‘perfect’ promotional item to give away.
Heidi covers more about finding and choosing promotional products than I knew existed. She goes into green products, sourcing of products, the shelf life of promo products, how to avoid promotional products PR disasters, how to handle holidays and much more.
Chapters are short and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. There’s no fluff – this is all good, useful and actionable information.
Since I’m known on Twitter for having information on green marketing, my friend “Tradeshow Guy” Tim Patterson asked the question, “Are there items in the promotional giveaway world that are truly ‘green?’ And if not, that’s a story in itself!” It sure would be.
It really comes down to how do YOU define a “green” promotional product? Currently, defining what is green is all over the place. One can call a reusable bag or water bottle green because it would be reused several times and not immediately make its way to a landfill. For the most strict green marketers, a reusable item is a cop out. They might not be happy until the item has been made of plastic derived from organic non-food supply corn grown in the United States in a factory powered by sun or wind that is employee owned and gives 10 percent of its profits to charity.
Because it is so difficult to determine if a giveaway is green, some time back I developed the Green Promo Score Sheet which is available for free download at GreenPromoScoreSheet.com. It helps you assess the “green-ness” of your giveaway based on over a dozen factors such as if it is reusable, recyclable, biodegradable, organic, fair trade, etc.
If you do decide to go down the green giveaway path, make sure that you select a giveaway that matches your objectives or purpose. For example, if your company is promoting that you are using alternative energy, don’t give away something that uses standard batteries! You might want to consider a flashlight that uses dynamo power (usually a crank which you turn to provide power) or solar.
When purchasing green promotional products, ask your supplier if he tell you what makes the item green or ecofriendly if specific claims are not made in the offer. Here is an example that I saw at an area business’ expo. They were giving out “natural” canvas tote bags to hold literature. Kudos for using a reusable product. But that may not have been the optimal choice for this event that was touting green products. Here’s why…
A lot of people think that if it’s cotton, it’s natural and therefore organic. Not so! Standard cotton production is not very environmentally friendly. It uses large amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and water. Organic cotton production uses non-GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds, manual or natural weeding, and water saving techniques.
Watch for vague words in product descriptions such as natural, ecofriendly, or green. These need to be defined.
The number of green tradeshow giveaway items available is increasing all the time. While labeling standards are still in a state of flux, it pays to find out why a product is green before you spend your green.
About the Author
Heidi Thorne is a promotional products and social media marketing consultant, specializing in ecofriendly, USA and union made products. A variety of more ecofriendly promotional products is available at her PromoWithPurposeShop.com shopsite. For more information on how to green up your marketing, visit her blog at PromoWithPurposeToday.com.
A terrific guest post by Brad Shorr on Heidi Thorne’s excellent blog ‘Promo With Purpose Today’ got me to thinking.
In the post, Brad discusses how long-term thinking and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can help to bring more people to your website. And Brad says that press releases are an excellent way to seed your company’s brand throughout the web.
I can’t agree more.
But with apologies to Brad, I’d take it a few more steps.
If you’re planning a press release, come up with a short list of a half dozen keywords that people might be searching for in regards to your tradeshow appearance. Perhaps you’re in the food industry and you want folks to find your products and scheduled appearance.
Your first sentence should contain at least one or two of those keywords and the name of the show. Search engine algorithms tend to look for keywords within the first several words of an article or release. So don’t waste time getting to the point.
In the body of the copy, be sure to include the other keywords that you’ve targeted. Sprinkle them generously – but don’t overdo it. It’s got to be both search-engine friendly and human-friendly (readable!). It may take a little re-working, but you’ll know when it reads right.
At the end, be sure to include all of the pertinent contact information, including links to your company’s website and blog (the link-backs that Brad mentioned).
Press releases have jumped from old media to new media quickly – and the change really took place a few years ago. Press releases can be found by anyone searching for specific keywords – they aren’t limited to reporters and bloggers. And as Brad stated, you may actually get an immediate lead from your release.
Two of my favorite resources to improve your press releases include a book and a website.
Check out David Meerman Scott’s“The New Rules of Marketing and PR” and Joan Stewart’s terrific website Publicity Hound. Be sure to subscribe to Joan’s weekly newsletter which is easily one of the best newsletters I open each week.
Interview with Heidi Thorne of Thorne Communications in the Chicago area. Heidi is an expert in promotional products and discusses the hottest current products – as well as those that have fallen out of favor.
