Did you know that studies have shown that nearly 99 percent of people who do not react to direct sales letters, sales presentations, or advertising copy the first time they encounter it will never respond at all? Those are pretty daunting odds for any business owner, but in a time when a tight budget is a necessity even for thriving businesses, those odds are downright frightening.

Even more serious, they mean that in order to get reliable results from potential customers, you will have to devote serious amounts of promotional and advertising money to making sure that they stay exposed to you so that you do not suffer from the inertia that prevents many people from buying even if they have the means and the motivation. However, wouldn’t it be great if you could spend a small amount of money one time, then know that your relatively – and literally – tiny expenditure would not stop subtly promoting you ever? Of course it would be. In fact, that would solve a lot of problems that most businesspeople encounter in advertising, including trimming your promotional budget.

The lesson here is that a little piece of promotional merchandise can go a long way. Promotional merchandise is any type of helpful product that has your company logo, name or contact information on that product. Common examples of promotional merchandise include desk accessories, computer accessories and recreational accessories, such as golf tags and sunglasses clips.

These items keep you and your business in a potential customer’s “sights” without requiring you to spend additional time and money on promoting yourself after you have made you initial contact. The gift will do it for you.

Even better, every time that person thinks about your business while they are making use of the promotional piece that you gave them, they will develop a little more of a rapport with you and your business and an affinity for your product that will make the decision to work with you extremely smooth and natural when the time comes for them to make a buying decision.

Of course, it is vitally important to provide decent promotional merchandise. If you give someone a pen with no ink, a calculator with no juice or a flash drive with no memory you will not develop a good image or give them positive feelings about your business. Fortunately, high quality promotional merchandise is easy to come by, and it can be extremely inexpensive. The key to promotional merchandise is to get something that you know the potential customer or client will use while staying within your budget. This is easy when nice pens can cost under a dollar a piece and relatively extravagant computer equipment can come at less than five dollars.

Each time the person uses your promotional merchandise, it will be a pleasant experience that will remind them how much value and effort you have already put into your working relationship with them, and you will have no trouble when it comes time for them to make a buying, contractual or networking decision because they will have been subtly sold on your for some time already.

Imagine this: What if every time you made a casual business contact, instead of hoping that the relationship the two of you developed would be solid enough that the contact would remember you and work with you in the future, you could be confident that you were constantly on their mind. In business, people, products and services are constantly competing for your attention. Just today, you have probably already dealt with many things that required you to make a variety of buying decisions, and you probably had more than one option for each avenue that you took or purchase that you made. Think about how you made these decisions:

• Did you pick the option that was the cheapest in order to save money?
  This may have been a factor, but few business owners will use shoddy products, so cheap is not always the way to go. However, budget is definitely important, particularly during unpredictable economic times.
  
  
• Did you go with an option that enabled you to retain continuity over time?
  Many business owners do not like having to switch between vendors. They prefer to work with people who have staying power and a solid work history.
  
  
• Did you opt for a service or product provided by someone you felt like you already had a rapport with?
  Most business decisions are driven largely by trust because even if trusting a person is not enough on its own, when all other things are equal, you will go with the person that you believe will be the best for your business. In your own business, it is vital to build an sense of trust and relationship with potential customers and contacts as quickly as possible so that you can benefit from the feeling of security that this relationship provides.

Many experts believe that customer loyalty will be what gets businesses through the current recession and what makes the difference between a business scraping by and really profiting in this new economical economy. One of the best ways to build a rapport fast is to insure that a contact has you in the forefront of their mind each day while doing something that brings positive thoughts about you to mind. There is no better way to accomplish this than by giving a small, useful gift.

This gift, which can be as simple as a pen with your contact information or as elaborate as a messenger bag or a golf accessory, shows that you provide value to everyone – even those that are not yet in a working relationship with you. This type of promotional merchandise works as an incentive because it accelerates the relationship process so that a contact feels that they have a connection with you even though they may only have met you once or not have spent a great deal of time with you. In times when every single decision that each contact makes counts for your business, it is vital to have this “trust” edge. Promotional merchandise is the best and fastest way to get it.

One of my favorite promotional products is a real classic: the coffee mug. It almost seems too simple at first – after all, who among us does not own at least ten of these things? However, when you stop to think about the innovative design of a coffee mug from an advertising and sales perspective, it’s really hard to beat.

A coffee mug does several things throughout the day. It holds your coffee, gets rinsed out and then usually sits on the corner of your desk for the remainder of the morning and often into the afternoon. Later it may hold more coffee, tea or even water. In short, it is an extremely useful item all on its own. When a coffee mug has your logo or contact information on it though, its utility escalates dramatically. All of a sudden, that useful item is incredibly powerful, constantly reminding the user of how useful you and your business product or service can be to them. Even more advantageous is the coffee mug with a design on both sides. This way other people also spend a great deal of time thinking on a conscious or subconscious level about the things that you can offer them because the coffee drinker and the coffee viewer are both exposed to your marketing each time the mug makes contact with the lips.

Really, the only thing to think about when you are considering investing in promotional coffee mugs is not if you are going to invest, but what type of mug to get. This is where you can make a major difference in your exposure with very little effort. By simply making your mug more practical or more appealing than other, commonplace coffee mugs, you can insure that your mug will have a spot on the desk every day rather than being part of the weekly rotation. Many promotional mugs can be purchased with additional insulation; lids for easy use while driving or even heated bottoms. Some mugs’ sleek design makes them more fashionable than others and even help the user look more professional an in control.

If you want to give a promotional item that gets the same results as a coffee mug but you want it to have more general use options, a water bottle, travel tumbler or sport thermos can also be good options. These containers can hold coffee or any other beverage, and are ideal for on-the-go businesspeople who understand the importance of staying hydrated. Even better, promotional “drinkware” is extremely budget friendly, and you can purchase many high quality items at a low price so that you can get incredible marketing mileage out of a single investment.

I’m drinking coffee out of a mug right now that has a long-time business associate’s name and number on it. That reminds me, I need to call him.