Promotional products wholesale

One way to publicize your business is to use strategies that draw attention to your brand, your logo, and your goods and services. Traditionally, marketing departments purchased advertisements on TV and other media to highlight the company. Often, you’ll see businesses showcase themselves using banners and digital signage at airports and shopping malls. However, one very effective way to promote your business is by acquiring promotional products wholesale and distributing them to your customers, prospective clients, and visitors as gifts.

PROMO STRATEGY

Your corporate promotional strategy could include customizing popularly used gift items, such as a silicone phone case, USB flash drive, or other 1005 customized gifts. The idea behind such a strategy is to first work with your team to identify what types of gift items your customer base appreciates. For example, if you are in the electronics business, perhaps many of your potential clients might like a soft case power bank as a token of appreciation for their loyalty.

Once you identify the gift item, it’s time to work with promotional products wholesale vendors and strategize details of each gift item you plan on having them manufacture for you. Most importantly, this discussion must include points such as:

Design, colors, shapes, and sizes of the promo products
Promotional messaging – like a buzzword (“We deliver value!”) or corporate mission statement (“Trust and transparency in all business dealings”). It’s important for companies to include such messaging on their promotion gift ideas because that’s the whole point of giveaways: It is to have recipients remember what your company stands for
Your artwork, sketches, and drawings. Most promo gift producers prefer to see your vision on paper (or digitally), so they might evaluate time and cost estimates
Order size and logistics, including the delivery schedule
Often, especially when you order promotional gifts from China, the manufacturer may agree to produce a batch of sample products for you to approve

Typically, the strategy evolves as a result of discussions between your marketing department and the promo product manufacturer’s team. In fact, once you provide an initial idea of your strategy, a seasoned gift product manufacturer, like OYI Gift, will add suggestions and recommendations of their own, based on their vast experience of helping similar businesses.

QUALITY MATTERS

When deciding on your business promotional strategy, it’s important to understand that the product idea represents only part of the value of the gift. Clearly, if it’s a bad idea, your audience (especially prospective clients!) won’t be very impressed. However, along with good ideas you’ll also need to work with promotional gift suppliers that deliver high-quality products. Why? Because, even though you might have a smashing idea – like a custom wireless charger or a very popular plastic toy – the gift might not meet the high production standards expected from your company.

Manufacturing and distributing bad-quality gifts may even be harmful to your company and its brand. Clients and prospects, receiving low-quality promo gifts, may decide that your company isn’t worth patronizing anymore! The rationale is that, when you order your promotional product wholesale, without considering quality, it reflects poorly on the quality of your company’s own products and services: How can a supplier of electronic items deliver high-quality products…when the quality of their promo products is so poor?

Financial Tips to Plan Promo Campaigns

When planning to source promotional products wholesale, one important tip to remember is that quality comes with a price! You’ll find many promotional gift manufacturers online, that promise to produce gift items in bulk, at shockingly low costs. How can they do that? Well, it’s very simple to reduce costs and undercut the competition:

Use substandard raw materials
Use lower-quality components
Subcontract the order to 3^rd-parties who mass produce for other companies (including your rivals and competitors)
Promise tight deadlines but never deliver on schedule

Each of the above points could have potential financial implications. So, when you are working out the financial aspect of your marketing strategy, make sure to discuss each of the above aspects of the arrangement with your promotional products wholesale supplier. It’s best to raise these points early on and understand what their financial impact is; then to “assume” all’s well and not receive value for the money you pay to your supplier.

BUDGETING YOUR CAMPAIGN

Here’s another financial tip to ensure a smooth relationship with your promotional gift suppliers. Prepare a budget…and discuss it with your gift manufacturer. All corporate promotional campaigns must have a budget. The budget represents your expectation of the promotion gift ideas you intend to roll out. If you don’t feel comfortable discussing your exact budget with the manufacturer, be sure to at least provide them with a ballpark figure. Why?

Because, when you negotiate a contract with the supplier, they’ll use your financial ballpark numbers to produce a viable manufacturing plan. For instance, if you only have $10,000 as your budget, and air freight for your order costs $6,000 – how can you expect the manufacturer to deliver high-quality for $4,000? They must account for labor, material, utilities, rent, and taxes, which means your promotional products wholesale supplier will likely not be able to work within your expectations.

It is in situations like these that your budget will come in handy:

Perhaps, instead of air freight, the supplier might ship via a cheaper (Sea, Rail, Overland) mode?
Maybe, if you review your $10,000 budget with the manufacturer, you could agree to reduce the quantity of the order and still work within your budget.
Knowing that you only have $10k to spend might inspire you to design promotional products wholesale, but with fewer features or functionality

It is only when you discuss your budget, openly and transparently, with the product manufacturer, that together you’ll be able to come up with creative, innovative, and equitable financial solutions to a problem. However, without a well-thought-out budget, promotion gift ideas might run into challenges when the time comes to manufacture the products.

COST JUSTIFICATION

Of course, pricing and financial terms are an important elements of any budget, because they’ll drive how much the products cost. But simply justifying the price, and agreeing on suitable payment terms won’t cut it. For example, manufacturing your promotional gifts in China may be a very cost-effective solution to promote your business. But the question is:

Are you receiving value for your promotional campaign?

How do you ascertain that value? Well, without going into the nuts and bolts of marketing and financial strategy, let’s simply this challenge down to “value for money”. The questions you must ask of your finance department and your marketing department are:

How much additional revenue will these promotion gift ideas generate for the company?
Will the new revenue opportunities materialize within a reasonable timeframe?
Are you ordering enough promo gift items to cover the duration of the campaign?
If the campaign is a huge success (you receive more revenue than you planned), what will be the cost to extend the campaign?
Do your promotional products wholesale suppliers have the capacity to support expanded demand, or will they charge you more to do so?

The objective of doing a cost justification is to ascertain whether the decision to source your promotional product wholesale pays for itself. It is absolutely possible that, once you do some number crunching, you’ll determine that the campaign won’t generate as much revenue within the target period, compared to the budget you allocated. And that may be okay. But at least you’ll know that up-front, before placing the order.

Another benefit of doing cost justifications is that, once you know what the bottom line is, you may be able to work with promotional products wholesale vendors to accommodate some of your financial pressures. For example, some product vendors like OYI Gift might agree to reduce the unit cost if you place a larger order. Alternatively, the promotional wholesale supplier might work with you to justify the cost by extending lead times.

Working With Promotional products wholesale Gift Vendors

Using promotional gift ideas to make the marketplace aware of your products or services is a great strategy. However, that strategy only works if you build a working partnership with your promotional products wholesale supplier. And, the only way to build such lasting partnerships is to find a supplier that’s right for you.

At OYI Gift, we have a long-standing tradition of working as partners with our clients. We don’t just see our clients as one-time billing opportunities. Rather, our objective is to continue to supply promotional items wholesale to clients for many years to come. In the spirit of that endeavor, we work with clients to review and refine their promotion gift ideas and offer our own inputs based on many years of supporting corporate marketing campaigns.

With our in-house manufacturing facilities, strong and creative technical teams, and the highest standards of quality control, we are one of the leading manufacturers of promotional gifts in China. We pride ourselves on the fact that many of our clients have been working with us for many years. That’s why most of our business comes from repeat clients!

Promoting Your Business With Gift Items