Which giveaways, premiums to get for your company's marketing activities

Whenever I go to a trade show, or receive a premium as a gift from a company, it always speaks volumes about who the company is, what they represent and can even affect if I want to do business.

Repetitive and redundant Premiums:
In reviewing all the premiums I have received from companies over the years, they tend to fall in a very small range of types of items:
+ Office Supplies (pens, mouse pads, monitor screen cleaners, notepads, calculators, etc)
+ Clothing (Polo's, polar fleece, t-shirts, etc)
+ Bags or carriers of some sorts (backpacks, laptop carriers, book bags, etc)
+ Other - (blankets, golf tees, stress toys, mini fans that hang around your neck and other gimmicky things)

The Saturation problem:
Living in the Silicon Valley, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen company branded premiums for sale at someone's garage sale. And, admittedly, if you looked in my closet, you would see an assortment of these things in boxes (and generally not being used).

I think we all initially happily take these premiums with greedy appreciation. I think it is the hunter and gatherer in us all. The idea of getting something for free, appeals to most everyone.

But when you take it home and realize you only own two notebooks (one personal and one work) and you realize you now have a total seven laptop bags (all premium items with different corporate logos, of course), the space these items take up to store and the practicality of having a whacked ratio of bags to notebooks, then suddenly that new laptop back is something you have to donate to Goodwill, sell in a garage sale or give to a needy college student.

Is this how you want your good marketing dollar investments to end up? --I would hope not.

How can you avoid the problem:
So the best solution is to seriously think about how and what premiums you want to invest in.
The best way to do this is look at your marketing plan, your company core values and what types of venues are these going to be given away (tradeshow, customer gift, promotion etc).

Here are some key questions to ask yourself to help you further define what giveaway to select and leverage
( inspired by article from frugalmarketing.com and I have added some of my comments, and insights below as well:
1) What do you want to achieve by giving away a premium item?
Drive Brand awareness? To qualify for the premium, do they need to complete a call to action like sign up for your online newsletter (lead generation)? etc
2) Who and what size is your target audience for receiving the item?
Based on your audience what types of items might they actually desire and USE?
3) Where and how will it be distributed
Is size a consideration in how you distribute it?
4) What is your budget?
Of course any customer would love a new convertible BMW as a premium, but unless your product has a multimillion dollar price tag, you have to be realistic about what you can spend per customer, based on how many premiums you need to acquire for your marketing activities.
5) How will the item encourage a customer or potential customer to do business with you?
6) What associations could the premium have to a customer
Is it Fun, organization oriented , helpful and efficient, etc?
7) Is there a way to track the effectiveness and ROI of the premium?

But at the end of the day, the biggest result we are looking for is if it helped us maintain the satisfaction of our existing customer base, and of course, also if it helped our business developement efforts and gained new customers.

In future posts, I will try to call out some premiums that I find interesting and unusual that have the potential of being highly effective with your potential customers and existing customers. (depending on, of course, if they are would match your target market, fall within your budget and if they fit in your strategic marketing activities)