Is your branded merchandise working in the way you want it to?

It’s important to know if the branded merchandise you are buying is working in the way you intended. Why are you buying it? Ask yourself – what are your goals? To drive more traffic to your website? To increase sales? Generate leads for the sales team? Once you have defined these goals you need to decide how and what to track.

Planning how the product fits into your overall campaign means you will get more return on investment than a last minute purchase.

THE HOW

QR Codes

QR (Quick Response) codes are great for when you don’t have much space to work with. Use them to direct people to a specific web page for more detailed information that you wouldn’t be able to fit on to your branded merchandise.

Unique landing pages

Set up a customised landing pages specifically created for your campaign. This way you can track effectively who has visited your page by using the details on your product. Make sure your call to action is clear – what do you want them to do when they get there? Make an enquiry? Buy a product?

Dedicated numbers

You could set up a separate phone number for your campaign. Call tracking technology is used to track phone calls to measure conversion rate and to better qualify leads.  Establish the callers who are showing a specific interest to turn them into loyal customers.

Sign up forms

If you are looking at a more general brand awareness approach why not get people to sign up for your email newsletter or to receive a catalogue. This way you can still track interest and you can keep in touch with those who are interested in your product/service.

Social media conversations

Make your branded merchandise social – get your customers to share pictures of your product, include a campaign hashtag to track conversations or just include your social media handles so people can follow you on your social channels.

THE WHAT

Calculate your Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on investment (known as ROI) measures the percentage of your profits to your advertising costs.

To find this number, subtract the cost you spent on products from the profit, then divide this number by the cost.

For example:

You spent £1,000 on giveaways that resulted in £5,000 in profits, the calculations would look something like this: (£5000 – £1000) / £1000 = 4.

Which means you made 4 times what you originally spent.

Cost per impression (CPI)

You could also track cost per impression. Work this out by the cost of the product compared to the number of times someone will see it.

For example:

You buy 100 mugs with your logo. They cost £4 each. That makes our total spend £400 (100 x £4).

One customer uses your mug four times every day at work for a year (average 253 working days) so 4 x 253  = 1012 impressions. Work out the CPI by dividing what you spent by impressions £4 / 1012 = £0.003 is your CPI.

Why branded merchandise works

The ROI on merchandise is actually higher than most other forms of marketing communications. 94.1% remember the advertiser/product when they received a branded product and 15% have gone on to make a purchase because of it.

Need some advice on your next promotional campaign? We can provide advice and ideas lists to get you started. You can get in touch in a number of ways – our website, email info@jsmbrandex.com or call us 01452 310030.