Stop giving away your promotional products!
Promotional products are an easy and inexpensive way to keep your company top of mind. A mug, a pen or a magnet is in view daily and you hope they cause your clients or prospects to call you.

But when you simply hand them out to anyone who crosses your path or sits in your business speaking audiences, you devalue them like so much scrap paper or waste. As long as the recipients get it for nothing, they will attribute very little value to it. And by extension, very little value to what you have to offer.

Here are three totally simple and natural methods for getting the recipients of your promotional products to give them intrinsic value:

Pens: provide a handout to your business speaking audiences (a sheet of paper, a note card or anything that can be written upon). During your speech, even if it's just 10 minutes, direct your audience to take their (company-name) pen and complete this exercise, or solve this puzzle, or write down these ideas. Just calling the pen by your company name and having the audience actually use it for one minute increases the value of your message and the product.

Magnets: I hope you have a great message printed on your magnet. A call to action or a question always add value to your contact information. You then incorporate the magnet's message into your business speaking presentation.

Let's say your magnet asks a question: "Are you as secure as you need to be?" During your speech you instruct the audience to pick up the magnet (they must hold it, not just look at it). Then you ask them to read the question out loud. You then go on to talk about why security is important and give them a couple of tips. To further impress upon them that you are the source for all things related to security, you tell them to imagine the best place in your office to stick the magnet and visualize it there.

Mug: These are also great objects for a question or challenge in addition to your company name and phone number. You can use the same technique as for the magnets with the mug. Pick it up, read the question, imagine where it will sit in their office. You can be sure that mug will not land in the back of the cupboard like all the other mugs!