How promotional products should be part of your growth hacking strategy?

Growth hacking has become an effective marketing strategy to make a business successful at a rapid rate. There are a plethora of growth marketing strategies which helps in increasing the market reach of the business to get more customers and boost sales. Various methods are used for growth hacking, and promotional products can become a vital part of your growth marketing project. The idea of using promotional products in the marketing of the business isn’t a new strategy. Businesses often use promotional products in order to introduce and market their products and services to the target market through the creation of value instead of various other marketing mediums like traditional media like TV, Radio, Newspaper or digital marketing medium like blogs, social media etc. If customers like the promotional products, they are more likely to purchase a product from the business.

This idea is quite easy to understand, and this makes it quite compelling. Here, we explain how promotional products can become a vital part of your growth hacking strategy.

Introduction of Promotional Products

Promotional products are products which are particularly created to market the brand of a business. They accentuate the brand image of the business and make it more visible. Its definition is quite broad. These products are any type of physical products like mugs, calendars, power banks etc. that are customized with brand logo and business name. Its forms matter much less than the entire intention behind the product that serves as a great customer acquisition channel. Of course, it isn’t necessary that the product be actually useful to quality as a promotional product. Few of the most successful promotional products are quite meaningless, but they are fun to have. However, most of the promotional products add value to the customers. These products are readily usable in daily lives of the people. These products should be usable for the customers. 

Purposes of Promotional Products

The major purposes of promotional products are quite a lot. However, there are significant purposes which are mentioned below:

1. Building brand awareness

Curiosity remains to leave a strong impact on the behaviour of the user. If a promotional product offers a benefit to the customer, then they will seek out more information about the business behind the product. They are more likely to buy products or services from that business. Hence, promotional products are great means of creating brand awareness and makes it an essential part of growth marketing strategy. 

2. Assists in acquiring leads

Growth hacking majorly deals with acquiring more leads in order to boost sales of the business. People are more willing to share their contact information for the products that provide them value. You can gather more leads by offering promotional products in your newsletter or promotional emails. The most successful promotional products are essentially designed in a particular way to facilitate lead capture easily. Promotional products are quite useful in showcasing business skills. It is quite true in the case of businesses which offer a variety of services which wish to leave an impression on the target customers.

How to make Promotional Products?

Now, you know what constitutes a promotional product and how it can help in your growth marketing strategy. It is time to know more about how to make promotional products. Here are the major aspects that you need to consider.

1. Identify the requirements of your audience

You should start by figuring out the underlying requirements of the target customers and remember to keep your entire focus narrow. You certainly wish to find easily solvable problems, not the problems which take up a lot of resources. You can research customers’ needs from Q&A websites like Quora, niche communities as well as industry blogs. You can also consider doing a survey of your existing customers or your audience in order to find what they need.

2. Brainstorming Ideas

Once you have duly identified the needs of the audience, brainstorm ideas which are mutually beneficial. There are three major things which you should consider before you settle for a particular promotional product.

• Lead Capture- Opt for the ideas which naturally need the users to share the contact information to get the promotional product.
• Linkability- Promotional products which become the go-to products for an industry often attracts various links as well as customer queries. Choose ideas which have inherent linkability.
• Press Potential- An exceptionally designed promotion product is more likely to get featured by the press and go viral. Virality is an essential part of growth hacking strategies. The best ideas would fulfil all of the above three requirements, though that’s not a necessity and, of course, you should also consider the amount of effort it will take to bring the idea to life.

3. Build the promotional product

Now combine all of your ideas to create a promotional product. It should be a well-polished Minimum Viable Product or MVP. In case you are planning to omit some of the features, make sure that you aren’t leaving any method to essentially capture leads since that’s exactly what will give you value.

4. Marketing at audience hangout points

As your promotion product is ready for the market, you should promote it. One tactic is to approach the audience at a place where they hang out more often. For instance, you can distribute promotional T-Shirts in trade fairs, conferences etc. Social media is another great medium to get to know about what your audience is currently discussing and sharing. Go to the website and search for the keyword and then analyse the results in order to find the right communities to place your promotional products.

Conclusion

Promotional products are quite powerful tools for driving potential customers to your brand. Growth hacking strategy deals with methods to increase the market visibility of the brand, and promotional products can certainly help in this regard. If you are pressed for time and require quicker results for brand awareness, then you should invest more time in developing and distributing promotional products. It will help you in capturing more leads that will lead to more sales in a short period of time.