Free Pen Givaway Marketing

So I'm sitting a a desk writing in my notebook (that's for another post) and I realize something that I did on several occasions that was profitable.

Give away pens with your company name, logo and phone number on them.

At one time I owned a financial services firm with my middle son as a partner and we got this crazy idea of buying 5,000 pens with our company name, logo and phone number on them to just drive around and give away.

We order the pens, they arrive at our office and we hop in the car and take turns jumping out and walking into businesses that would use pens and say

"Hey, could you guys use some free pens?"

Everyone said yes and we would give them a handful of pens and say "Here you go!".

We would leave and inevitably at some point we would get a call from someone that needed our services. The 5,000 pens cost us about .37 each if I remember correctly and I am sure that the revenue from the free giveaway was well over 25K.

So, if the pen giveaway is too expensive for what you offer, find another freebie that people would love to have and get your company exposed for pennies.

BTW, we would also go to the various banks and leave the pens on counters where people would be filling out bank deposits and such... talk about a targeted audience... that was a solid giveaway.

Great Idea!

I just helped my GF out on some fairs..she's in the animal biz.

Anyway we gave away pens and water bottles with the hospital logo and number etc...

What I learned...People love free water bottles. drummed up hundreds of conversations and business, when they saw the water bottle and goody bag of a magnet for the fridge and a pen.

Yep People absolutely love free stuff!

A big thing over here is 'Stubbie Holders' - Australian Slang for can coolers.

They cost <0.50 cents per unit and you can guarentee they will get used over and over - and allways in a social setting so your brand will get massive exposure over the warm beer drinking months

For anyone in the UK, here's a good site to order pens from: http://www.emcadgifts.co.uk/default.asp?part=PIER

These are pretty cheap so you can't go wrong. There's so many different ways to monetize this, it's unreal.

Students would love free pens, so give them out on college/university campuses. Find a few relevant affiliate programs that students would like (scholarships, MMO, poker etc), buy a domain that forwards to your affiliate link, get the pens made with your domain on it and give them away. Test a few different affiliate programs and scale up the ones that convert best. Enjoy!

Any proof of ROI with promotional items?

xyzxyz said:

Any proof of ROI with promotional items?

Click to expand...

Is this a serious question?

You're joking right?

i remember watching a marketing course some time ago that recommended to
"make your advertising itself valuable"

this is a nice application of the concept.

point being, that people usually throw away ads if it's just an ad.
but make the ad itself useful in some way, and they'll keep it, be exposed to it repeatedly, and eventually come across a situation where they could use your services. and when they do, your company is the first to come to mind.

good stuff