From Novelties to Necessities: Securing Customer Re-booking's
Josh Filer
Branded Gifts & Merchandise | Any Colour, Size, Shape and Material | Eco -Friendly | Global Recycled Standards
Promotional travel merch has been an established way to increase brand awareness and customer retention. A pen or a mug here and there are surefire ways to delight a customer, but how long do customers actually use said merch before it gets added to the pile of other promotional products?
Determining what’s practical, collectable, and memorable for customers takes careful consideration. In order to truly maximise customer loyalty and continuous brand awareness, the item needs to be:
That sounds like a daunting task, but D&S Travel Supplies are here to help. Let us offer you a few ideas when planning for the next travel merch to give to your customers.
Ask yourself the question: do YOU need it?
Instead of relying on statistics for the next promotional material, ask yourself: how often would you use the item if you received it? As a traveller, is the item likely to be in your suitcase, or will it end up in a drawer somewhere?
For example, bags may be an effective giveaway item that gives a decent amount of impression, but how likely are your customers going to use it? Ask yourself as a traveller which bag you’ll use on your travels: a promotional one or your trusted one?
Instead, look at the situation from a different perspective. Travellers are unlikely to change their travel gear, especially when they’ve already invested money and trust into it. So why not get inside that suitcase to make their lives a bit easier? Things like travel cubes or washbags are small and unintrusive yet are helpful and practical.
Listen to your audience
Do you have several travel merch ideas but are not quite sure which one to implement? Why not harness social media and ask your audience?
According to Promotional Products Association International’s 2019 consumer study, 96 percent of customers want to know ahead of time what kind of merch they’ll get from companies. What better way to drum up excitement and get more exposure than holding a poll on social media?
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Doing so not only shows that you take your customers’ voices into consideration but that you also care about their needs. In the interim, public polls allow you to avoid committing to a custom merch that may not prove to be popular, thereby saving you money.
Consider the item’s general practicality
A one-of-a-kind travel merch is nice and all, but it can be easy to get swept away with its uniqueness without any regard for practicality.
Let’s use Concorde’s gifts, for example. As a token of gratitude, British Airways showered passengers with all sorts of inflight gifts - a gesture that passengers loved. But the gifts they received ranged from something useful, such as a luxury pen or food atlas, to something eccentric, like a candle snuffer or a decorative paperweight.
Of course, British Airways can afford such strange gifts, considering how large the company is. But for smaller firms, designing and giving peculiar gifts is more of a detrimental expense than a benefit.?
Final Thoughts
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to designing a practical yet still collectable travel merch. It takes a lot of planning to make your item stand out from the ocean of off-the-shelf promotional items out there.
The key is to remember that no award-winning, viral advertising campaign was put together overnight using off-the-shelf items. Those promotions required careful planning to make their brand truly stand out, and a delicate consideration of what the customers would love the most. You want them to keep remembering your brand even after they’ve already enjoyed their trip.
Most importantly, the planning process takes time. But with the help of D&S Travel Supplies, you too can design a travel merch that will get travellers talking about you for years to come.
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