I feel like I’m dating myself by bringing up a Jerry Maguire reference but for those of us around in 1996 when the movie came out will remember the famous line (among others).

In the movie, sports agent, Jerry Maguire, delivers this phrase to his client, pro football player, Rod Tidwell. Tidwell is looking for Maguire to “Show me the money!” but continues to behave in ways that make this difficult for Maguire. Maguire pleads with Tidwell to “Help me help you”, meaning that he wants to help Tidwell but needs some cooperation to make it easier to help him, the idea of reciprocal support so that both can achieve their goals.

So, although we offer a lot of tips on a day to day basis, this is probably the best way to make sure you get the most out of your promotional product spending. And guess what? It will save you money, worry, time and effort. If you share this plan with your Promotional Product Consultant, they will even do most of the work for you! And if that sounds like the kind of win-win you’re looking for, keep reading.

Let’s look at the four key items your plan should include.

1.       PROMO Goals (Marketing Goals)

The first thing you really need to look at are your goals. PROMO can support many different marketing goals, it really needs its own blog post, so we’ll look at it in more depth in a couple of weeks. But let’s start with some of the basics, what are you trying to accomplish?

·         Brand Awareness

·         Recognition, Rewards & Appreciation

·         Sales Promotions and Encouraging Sales Behaviour

·         Fundraising or Alternate Revenue Streams

Once you know what you’re hoping to accomplish with branded merchandise, it will not only help you to plan the type of PROMO you want; how you want to give it out; the budget (or budgets); and whether there’s opportunity to coordinate your purchasing.

2.       Timing of Events and Activities

Now that you know what you want to get out of your PROMO, it makes it easier to identify when you need your PROMO. Start by brainstorming specific events or activities you want to have PROMO for:

·         Events where you want to have a visible presence:  Think of things like project or product launches, trade shows, conferences, or charity events your company supports.

·         Celebrations or Appreciation Activities: Think of things like Safety Meetings, Service Awards, Employee and Customer Appreciation Events, Holiday Appreciation Gifts.

·         Day to Day Giveaways: What do you want to have available day to day to hand out? Pens, notepads, smaller giveaways, or items for children who come in fall into this category.

·         Specific Sales Promotions: Are you looking to encourage customer sales behaviour during a specific period or launching something new this year?

·         Revenue or Fundraising Goals: Do you have such a strong brand that you sell your PROMO or maybe you want to use PROMO to support a fundraising campaign.

Once you’ve built your calendar for the year, it will be easier to prioritize and budget for your branded merchandise; know when you need to be ordering (hint, it’s not the week before the event); and identify opportunities to coordinate with other departments or locations to take advantage of quantity discounts.

3.       Budget

Because you’ve already identified your goals and needs for PROMO, this part becomes easier to complete. Maybe you can’t formalize the budget for each activity at the start of the year, but when you have the list of priorities, you can begin to budget for the key activities and identify the activities you want to do and what targets would need to be met to fund those items as well.

Not sure how much to budget for certain events or activities? Your Promotional Product Consultant can help here too, even before you’re ready to purchase. Want to know if your idea will cost $10 or $100 per item? Talk to us. Want an idea of the types of items you can get for different budge amounts? Just ask.

4.       Coordination

This is a piece many larger organizations miss out on. For many of our customers, we have contacts from multiple locations and departments and many times, they buy the same or similar things, just at different times.

If you are clear on your plan and needs for the year, it’s much easier to find opportunities to coordinate to save time and money! Remember, PROMO pricing is very quantity driven AND many options have large minimum order requirements that aren’t necessarily accessible if your needs are smaller.

But let’s say multiple locations need a small inventory of higher end items to use for donations or key appreciation gifts. If you coordinate at the beginning of the year, instead of each location using time and money to order, identify how many you would need across the locations. Not only can each location have a greater variety of items, but it will also cost less per location to achieve this.

Or perhaps you want to have items to provide children who come in with parents to help amuse and entertain them while you speak to the parent. Maybe this doesn’t happen often so you really only need 20-30 for the whole year but many of the most cost-effective options have minimum order quantities of 100 or 250.

So, back to the theme “help me help you”. Not only will building this plan help you, even if you don’t share it. If you choose to share it with your Promotional Product Consultant, they can definitely help them help you by keeping you on track by letting you know when you want to have your order in; have more time to find truly unique and different items; and even let you know about sales or clearance specials that would meet your goals.