Marketing Promotional Products

Jeff: I am Jeff Philips and I have a great show for you today. If you have a business of any sorts, whether it is big or small, you have to market and promote it, and no better way to do that is with promotion products, and I have Dave Gephardt here with Gephardt Marketing Solutions.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what it is that you do?

Dave: Sure, Gephardt Marketing does all of your promotional products. We do the engraving, silk screening, embroidering, printing and imprinting, any kind of product to get your name and logo out and have your message heard.

Jeff: How are businesses using promotional products and where are they using them?

Dave: Certainly, some use the incentives which, of course, still have logos on them where you might have a sales contest or something like that, but most use promotional products at trade shows, for rewarding either clients, rewarding employees, trying to attract new people, people to their websites, there is just a plethora of ways to use promotional products and get your information out.

Jeff: Great. Obviously ROI’s always a concern, can you measure it, and what is the ROI on a product?

Dave: ROI is always a bear to try to figure out how to best measure, but what we do is have done a lot of national studies and found that if you just do direct mail, when you add a promotional product to a response, then responses increase 60%. People that were going through the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport were questioned and 72% of them had a promotional product with them that they had received from somebody, and over 45% of the people could remember who had given it to them and where they gotten it.

Jeff: As far as the products themselves, is there any one product that works better than another, or is it just industry-specific?

Dave: It is always event-specific, whether you are doing it at a trade show and you are trying to get consumers to a certain event, whether it be something that you want to advertise in their kitchen, a magnet or a sticker that goes on the refrigerator, calendars, picture frames, we have spatulas, the pizza cutters are amazing. ROI’s on those, I never would have guessed it, myself. Key chains are still big, pens of all types and all we are also getting more into electronics.
Jeff: What about costs, are they expensive?

Dave: We did 30,000 camouflage silicone bracelets at the state fair and those were about 40 cents each, all with the name and a color imprint such as that. Other things for a board meeting we do, every year, a $150 dollar pen that they give to the outgoing board chairman.

Dave: We do everything from the five-dollar t-shirt to up to leather coats, all sorts of things.

Jeff: If the viewers would like more information on promotional products where can they go?

Dave: Our phone number is (919) 732-6464, but of course we are on the web, www.GephardtMarketing.com, and then we also have a specific one for awareness items, and it is Gephardtpink.com, but you can find purple items and blue items and yellow items, and then we have Gephardtgreen.com for all your eco, sustainable, organic items, so give us a call and we will help find the best product for you at the right price, at the right time.