Physical promotional materials beat digital noise when backed by clear goals, audience targeting, and consistent brand design.

The average consumer encounters thousands of marketing messages. Of course, the vast majority of these go unnoticed. Either they're scrolled past, archived, or simply ignored.

Only a small fraction of these thousands of messages manage to get through, and at the core of branding efforts is the struggle to make your brand noticeable.

To stand out in a saturated digital marketing world, many companies are turning to physical promotional materials. For example, branded notebooks or water bottles could sit on someone's desk for months or even years at a time, occupying real space in someone's life and serving a real purpose.

With that said, creating physical promotional materials isn't guaranteed success, so let's explore what separates a good custom promotional materials campaign from a bad one.

Clarify Your Goals for Promotional Items

According to Kimberly Whitler and Neil Morgan, marketing needs to have clear goals. Whenever you produce a custom promotional object, it should serve a clear marketing purpose beyond simple brand awareness.

For example, let's say your company is attending a trade show. You might invest in items that draw people into your booth.

For instance, if you're operating out of a hot convention center in New Mexico, any booth offering branded water bottles is sure to get heavy traffic. On the other hand, if your goal is client retention, you might want to splash out more on higher-end custom promotional materials to signal your appreciation.

Match Branded Merchandise to the Audience

It always pays to consider what your specific audience will find useful. For tech companies, items like branded wireless chargers or webcam covers could work well. But for a health and wellness audience, those are unlikely to be items that will see much use.

Such audiences might prefer things like:

• Custom water bottles
• Yoga mat straps
• Reusable tote bags

Prioritize Recognition in Your Design

Your brand's visual identity should be immediately apparent. You should use the following elements consistently:

• Logo placement
• Color palette
• Typography

If your company doesn't have a clear and established ruleset for these kinds of aesthetics, you shouldn't just go with the default template. A study by Ella Ward, Giang Trinh, et al. found that products with high visual branding cohesion had 17% higher correct brand recall and were matched to their parent brand by more than twice as many respondents as products with low visual branding cohesion.

Tools like Adobe Express' business card for print solutions let you build print-ready cards using your own brand colors, fonts, and logo placement, which can serve as a practical starting point for figuring out your branding.

Corporate Giveaways Work Best With a Plan

Unlike digital marketing, which is easy to ignore and forget, custom marketing tools put your brand in someone's hands and on someone's desk and keep it there for months or even years. A successful marketing campaign using custom promotional materials can deliver a strong return on investment.

But you need to have a clear audience in mind and a meticulously designed and sourced promotional product given out according to a sustainable promotional plan.

If you're interested in learning more about branding and marketing, see our other blog posts.