Hi, my name is Mike Mitchell, and today I'd like to talk to you about how to use promotional items to grow your small business. For any business, and any advertising plan that you have, one of the best ways to promote your business is to give out free promotional items to the public, so that they'll remember you and hopefully use your products. Now, promotional items can range from all sorts of things. Many times companies will put their names on t-shirts, or clothes of some kind. I'm sure you've been to a bank where you've gotten a pen, a ballpoint pen. You can arrange from balloons to pretty much anything that you can imagine, you can print your company name on, and give it out as a promotional item. So, when you're thinking of what to use, the first thing you need to do is think of what kind of object you want to give away to the public. Now, obviously, some things depend on price. If you're a small company, you can't afford to give away brand new cars with your name on it, so, the price is probably going to be the biggest determining factor. But, number two, you also want to think of the relevance. You want to give some product away that will in some way be connected to your business or service. And, with that you also want to make sure that whatever you're giving away doesn't negatively relate to your business. So, for example, your business deals with children, you wouldn't want to give away a bottle cap opener, or something that implies alcohol, because the two generally aren't very compatible. So, you have to be careful when you're thinking of the object, but once you do, you can choose from a whole range of items in terms of price and size, and then you would have your name printed on it. Now, your name or logo should be very visible, and easy to read from whatever the object is. So, if it's on a t-shirt, don't think of just the small, little emblem above the shoulder, but use the whole shirt. If you're going to use a print, and you're going to have to print something on the shirt, it costs just as much to print the one little tiny item as to use the whole shirt. For things like ballpoint pens, or stickers or balloons, you'll work with the printer or the company that deals with these to decide what can be placed on it. But, the last thing that you're going to want to think about for this object is time. How long will this promotional item be used? If you think of some really clever promotional item that has your name on it, and it's an object that somebody is going to use all the time, or use for a long period of time, then that advertising money that you spent will be better used than if it's something that is just used once and thrown away. That's why, generally, something like a balloon, that is going to pop or deflate after a couple of hours or days, is not as good as something like a t-shirt, that can be worn for years and years.
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