What Is Branded Merchandise?
Branded merchandise refers to products with a company’s logo or design printed, engraved, or embroidered on them to promote the brand.
Common items include t-shirts, pens, and coffee mugs.
These products increase brand awareness and help businesses stay memorable to potential customers through repeated exposure.
Types of Merchandise
The types of merchandise that are sold to customers can be divided into four main categories including convenience items, impulse merchandise, household and electronic goods and specialised goods.
- Convenience: This category includes essential goods. These products, which include food and hygiene items, can usually be found pretty much anywhere including supermarkets, gas stations and convenience stores. Customers will generally just choose a different brand if their usual brand is not available. Retailers will need to sell a high quantity of these items to make a profit.
- Impulse: Impulse products are also known as luxury items and include things like candy or magazines. These are the little inexpensive extras people may purchase when they are out buying their groceries. These items are often displayed at the checkout. People don’t generally include these items in their budget and will just grab them last minute.
- Household and Electronic: People tend to research and compare brands when buying these products. These are usually higher-priced products and include clothing, furniture, smartphones and electronics. People often favour one brand over another when it comes to Shopping Merchandise.
- Specialised: The specialised category include high priced items that people buy much less often but spend a lot more money on. Things like holidays, expensive alcohol and cars belong in this category. People often will not accept any alternatives and know exactly which brand they want. Often, people have done a significant amount of research before purchasing a specialty item.
Types of Branded Merchandise
Gadgets
From phone chargers to pedometers, everyone loves their gadgets making them a popular choice for branded business gifts. Not only are these practical, they are also highly desirable.
Stationery
Go a step above with monogrammed stationery. Personalising your stationery looks professional and may be just the thing to give your company the boost it needs. You can also provide your colleagues with branded stationery to create a uniformed, professional branded workplace.
Event Giveaways
Who doesn’t love to get free stuff? Whatever kind of merchandise you decide to brand make sure you have a lot of it to give away at conventions, conferences and trade shows. This is the ideal low-cost marketing strategy, raising awareness of your business and making people happy at the same time!
Hoodies, T-Shirts, & Other Clothing
You can’t really go wrong with putting your logo design on Hoodies. Whether you are a child, teenager or an adult, everyone loves to wear a nice warm hoodie. They come in a wide variety of colours.
When you are considering which type of product to put your logo on, remember that t-shirts are a go-to piece of clothing for pretty much everyone. Choose a high-quality soft cotton t-shirt, put your logo on it and you have a great way to promote your business!
Tote Bags
It may not be the first thing you think of when you are considering which merchandise to brand but a useful tote bag could be a perfect item to showcase your company. Just think of all the different places people carry their tote bags – school, work, the gym, the library, yoga class etc. You could have an entirely new audience seeing your logo!
Home/Living
Home and living products make excellent branding opportunities for promoting your business. You have many choices when it comes to home and living products. Put your logo and call to action on custom travel mugs, kitchen utensils, BBQ sets, aprons, beanbags, clocks, beach towels, and even champagne glasses to name just a few.
Accessories
Don’t forget about all the much-loved accessories that can be branded with your logo. Phone cases, hats, gloves and socks are useful, handy and will help to get your company name recognised and advertised.
Benefits of Branded Merchandise
Creative marketers have known the importance of branded merchandise for years. It is one of the main ways a company gets noticed and remembered. There a few other reasons that branded merchandise is essential.
Great ROI Marketing Source
You can achieve big marketing goals with even a small budget. Several low-cost promotional products can be branded with your logo. The prices of promotional products are often kept very low so companies can afford to purchase in bulk.
Brand Reach & Recognition
If your logo is apparent on items people use every day people will start getting used to seeing it and more and more people will recognise and remember it.
Increase Customer Loyalty
Marketers know that giving away promotional products can increase a customer’s loyalty in a short period of time, especially if they are useful and engaging. Make sure your branded products are of high-quality so that people associate high quality with your business.
More Revenue
If your company sells its branded merchandise on the side, it can increase your revenue stream significantly.
Long-term Advertising Effects
Branded merchandise can stick in your consumer’s brain for much longer than you may realise. In one study, it was found that people could recall the name of a brand even two years after they have received a free promotional product with that company’s logo on it.
Social Media & Dark Social Amplification
In today’s society, people post everything to social media. When people take a selfie with their branded merchandise at an event or other unique setting and post it onto a social media platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat they have just exponentially increased the marketing capacity of your branded merchandise. Businesses profit even more when their branded merchandise in plastered all over social media for even more people to see. So put your logo on something cool and watch your profits skyrocket!
A More Effective Business Card
When people are considering how to get their name out there, most people think of handing out business cards, but promotional products can do the very same thing with a much greater impact. Instead of handing out business cards with your name and contact information consider distributing a promotional product like water bottles, t-shirts or phone cases. 71.6% of potential customers will remember the name of a company that gave them a free promotional product according to marketingsherpa.com.
The promotional gift items you hand out will have a similar effect as business cards as they will have your contact information printed on them as well as your company logo. You may also want to include images and a slogan depicting your business message. What a great way to promote your business and have people remember you!
Don’t forget to think about social media when you are designing your branded merchandise. Include QR codes and hashtags for even more impact.
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