Tag Archives: marketing ideas

Why Do You Need Personalised Office Equipment?

Have you been wondering how to make your office a little more homey and friendly feeling, help your business appear more professional to your employees and clients, or tie in your office supplies with your brand for a more cohesive aesthetic? Personalised office equipment could be exactly what you need!

Personalised office equipment could be anything from a custom-printed mug for the breakroom bearing your company’s logo, to a personalised notepad with your branding and contact details printed at the top.

There are so many benefits to investing in personalised office supplies and business stationery – and, contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t have to be expensive! In terms of budget, there are many low-cost sources of office supplies and equipment, so why pay the extra?

In this article, we will discuss the benefits of personalised office equipment to your business and where you can order yours today.

Can Personalised Office Equipment Improve Your Business Branding?

Read any book on business marketing or search online and brand marketing comes out on top of the list of marketing essentials. Establishing and building a brand is one of the fundamental ways of promoting and growing a business.

Develop your own corporate brand image and try to emulate the success of major corporations, whose brand images are closely associated with their products and services.
With brand marketing, the company should use their chosen brand image in every aspect of the business, and that includes areas such as office equipment.

The consistent use of the brand’s image:
1) Immediately makes your brand familiar to customers and the public. For instance, McDonald’s golden arches logo stands out on the high street and is instantly recognisable, without even seeing the company name.
2) Reinforces your brand among your own employees. As a business owner, you encourage your employees to be brand ambassadors and using branded office products internally is great for achieving this.

If your employees associate themselves with the brand, they will believe in and promote the company’s brand image to customers. It is a very important aspect of business marketing – which is why you need personalised equipment in the office.

Some companies, perhaps focusing on their customers only, forget that their own employees are part of the brand too. It makes an enormous difference to business promotion and company morale when employees see themselves as part of the brand.
How can a company be true to its own brand image if they don’t promote that image both internally and externally?

What Kinds of Office Equipment Can Be Personalised?

The list covers many items that a company uses on a day-to-day basis, including pens, notepads, personalised mugs and letter openers.
Cheap, non-branded versions of all these products are indeed available from any office stationery supplier. Some business owners, despite brand promotion being a prime marketing goal, automatically choose the cheaper option rather than using personalised products in their own office.

But for long-term marketing, this is a false economy. Even if you don’t see an immediate benefit, don’t underestimate the long-term effect of personalised office equipment.

Where Can I Use Personalised Office Supplies?

Aside from being useful for internal brand promotion within the office, most of the above products work very well as customer promotional gifts and can be distributed:

1) During trade shows and sales conferences
2) As part of promotional events, such as “spend £20 and get a free mug” when ordering online
3) In your customer-facing business premises, if you have one

As an example, if your business is in the hospitality sector, such as a hotel, branded personalised office equipment such as stationery and pens are great to leave around the hotel for guest use. For instance, most hotels provide pens and stationery in their rooms.
Personalise the pens and notebooks to match the hotel’s name and style. Guests will take the pens from the hotel rooms and use in their everyday life. From a quality point of view, make sure that the pens work well as it is a poor recommendation for the brand if they run out of ink, or break, after a short period.
Look around your home or working environment to see how many promotional items from other brands you own – it may surprise you!

How to Personalise Office Equipment

So, when it comes to ordering personalised business stationery, office equipment and promotional products with your branding, what kind of products are out there – and how might you use them? Here are some examples.

Personalised Mugs

Mugs are probably the most versatile item, as they are highly visible and used every day. You may choose full-colour designs that cover one side or a design wrapped around the entire mug.

Choose a design that matches the company’s brand image, is nice to look at and reflects its products and services. If its intended use is as a promotional gift, make sure that the design includes contact information, and use a good quality mug. As with other items in this category, cups offer long-term brand exposure.
A well-designed personalised mug looks great on social media. Perhaps offer them as prizes during social media campaigns.

Design personalised mugs for your employees complete with their names, or perhaps have a designer draw a caricature of each person and give them out as Christmas presents. This would be a fun way to engage with your employees!

Notepads

Personalised notepads are great all-rounders. They can be used:
1) In the office
2) In the shop, hotel, or other business premises (to be used by staff and guests alike)
3) As promotional gifts for customers
4) As gifts for your employees to take home

One particular advantage of promotional notepads is their size, which allows for extensive creative design and personalisation. Being a paper-based product, they are easy to print on and are less expensive than some other items.
If your business is in the legal sector, design custom branded yellow legal notepads for internal and promotional use. These can be used both internally and for customer engagement.

If aimed at important customers, combine the notepad with a high-quality pen in an attractive leather-style folder. Alongside mugs, pens and notepads are some of the most popular promotional items, because they also offer long-term brand exposure. In marketing budget terms, that’s great value for money.

Pens

There is not a lot of space on a standard pen, so when adding text, include essential information only. If branding is important, custom manufacture the pens using brand matching colours and use a unique shape or design.
The custom manufactured pen option is more expensive and perhaps more appropriate if used for important customer promotions.

As mentioned above, pens are great promotional items for hotels, whose guests may continue to use them after leaving the hotel. If the company hosts a sales conference, give away branded pens and notepads for note-taking. The recipient will hopefully carry on using the items after the event.

For the ultimate high-tech promotional gift, use pens with built-in USB storage and a laser pointer. Before a sales conference or customer meeting, load up the pen with company sales brochures before distribution. These items are also highly popular with employees. Before giving them to the customer, make your sales pitch presentation using the laser pointer. It is a novelty gift, but a highly useful one.

Letter Openers

There are several types of promotional letter openers available, including plastic and sliver knife styles. However, think carefully before giving away a knife-style opener.
Aside from the danger aspect, something that resembles a blade may get blocked by airline security, which would cause issues for a customer flying back to their home city. Unless you have a pressing reason to choose the former, the plastic-style opener is likely the safer option and features several unique benefits.

Because of the plastic material, they come in multiple colours and shapes and are convenient for adding promotional printing, compared to the silver knife style, which is only suitable for engraving.

Rubber Stamps

Unless there is some novelty value in them, rubber stamps are not as useful as promotional gifts. However, they are very versatile when used by a business, in an office or retail environment.

For instance, a coffee shop implementing a loyalty card scheme may use a coffee bean shaped logo stamp, for stamping their loyalty cards, each time a customer buys a cup of coffee. Typically, stamps with a company logo and address are the most popular for office use.

But stamps are versatile and may use any shape or design that fits! Often, these are used in the office to mark received documents or invoices—‘Received’ and ‘Paid’—being typical examples.

Where Can I Buy Personalised Office Equipment?

Personalised office equipment is a great way to liven up your desk at work, and spread your brand awareness among your employees, clients, customers, and the general public.
At 123Print, we provide a wide range of affordable personalised office equipment for you to choose from. You can make your own personalised mug or notebook featuring your business logo and tagline with our easy-to-use design editor. Our printing technology is the best available on the market, so you’ll end up with an extremely high-quality product that you can be proud to associate with your brand.

Start with a blank design, or choose from a range of templates that have already been created for you. We can also print flyers, postcards, business cards and even custom printed envelopes for your business at extremely affordable prices.

When your order is complete, our shipping process ensures that we’ll dispatch your order within two working days! We also offer a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee, so you have absolutely nothing to lose by giving us a try – and we’ll replace or refund your order if you’re ever unsatisfied with the results.

What are you waiting for? Visit our website now to get started and transform your business into a true force to be reckoned with!

How Colour and Other Factors Persuade Your Customers

Have you ever bought something – or not bought something based purely on its colour? I’m sure, from a gent’s point of view, many of us have opted for those shiny blue wellies over the pink flowery wellies and what’s that? You only have a white iPhone 6B left in stock? Hmm, yeah I’ll come back next time.

Colour based decisions are part and parcel of everyday life. Colour shapes everything we see and since our childhood we have all had colour prejudices placed into our subconscious thinking, affecting our everyday decisions – for life.

howcoloursandotherfactorspersuadeyourcustomers
Continue reading How Colour and Other Factors Persuade Your Customers

Promotional Merchandise Infographic

The Value of Promotional Merchandise [Infographic]

In a world dominated by online marketing, SEO and social media articles, it’s easy for us marketers to sometimes forget the value and importance of the traditional promotional merchandise marketing methods.

For us at 123Print UK we love promotional merchandise, as it plays a vital part in our business and we firmly believe in its marketing capabilities. To demonstrate this we created an infographic which firmly supports the use of promotional merchandise, whilst also highlighting its benefits.

Feel free to share!

123Print UK Infographic Value of Promotional Business Merchandise

Do you use promotional merchandise in your business? Share with us on our Facebook page, or comment blow.

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Postcards

5 Postcard Marketing Ideas That Really Work!

When Theodore Hook invented the first postcard in the early 1800’s, he must have known he was on to a winner. The simplistic ability to say hello with a personalised touch, with the advantage of being cheaper than a letter meant the nation became ‘hooked’ on postcards.

Since their invention we’ve sent millions across the globe and it’s the personalised touch which is so unique to the postcard, which perks/sparks an interest in marketers. At 123Print UK we love using postcards for a wide range of business uses and we love learning about knew ways we can use them.

Below we’ve listed our 4 favourite postcard marketing ideas; let us know in the comments below if you have any of your own.

 

Personalised Customer Service

You will know by now that customer service plays a major role in marketing; and businesses who split the two elements apart are destined for failure. So when it comes to delivering excellent customer service, postcards could give you the extra edge you’ve been looking for.

Think about the effects a simple handwritten apology, accompanied with a gift voucher code could have when trying to retain a disgruntled customer. It not only shows you’ve taken the time out of your day to apologise for your mistakes, but also gives you the chance to show you’re a real human being with personality and emotions; something a customer can really connect with.

A Constant Reminder…

We all get the emails reminding us to reorder, and yet, most of us will promptly delete them. Would you rather receive a personalised postcard with a discount code off your next order as a reminder? .

We know it wouldn’t be practical to send thousands of postcards every week, but you could use them to surprise loyal customers during special occasions such as Christmas. Or perhaps if you have a clever CRM database you could really impress customers by sending them a simple, affordable birthday wish. Plus the glossy print is always going to catch people’s attention much more than a plain and bland letter.

Another example; if you work in a service industry, people always need a little reminder when their car may need an annual service, or they need to book a dentist appointment.

 

Fact: A recent survey found that 85% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 said they read direct mail pieces

Free Postcard Marketing

Why pay big money for advertising when you can let your customers target and advertise for you? With the postcard you can do just that, everyone loves receiving a postcard and we can’t help ourselves from picking them up when they’re on sale. If you have the right type of business you could offer free postcards on your premises with different great designs and you could even add referral codes or discount codes, which your customers could send to friends and family who may be interested in your services. It’s a sure fire winner as it will certainly get people talking about and connecting with your business!

Creative Postcard
American Creative Design Service – El Creative, made a number of creative postcards to market their skills.


Show Off Your Skills!

As you may have noticed, here at 123Print UK, we are massive fans of the business card. It has an abundance of diverse uses when marketing your business, with the only potential downside being its size. With the postcard you get all the positives of a business card – but with much more space to shout about your business and latest offers.

If you’re in a graphic design or illustration niche why not show off your skills with all the extra space a postcard can offer? We’ve seen some fantastic designs here at 123Print and the postcard is one of your most creative tools when trying to show off exactly what is great about your business.

Introducing… Your Business

If your business is new to the area, then postcards are the perfect way to say a friendly hello to your local community! They easily stand out from the usual junk mail, both with their personal touch, and without an envelope the ‘open rate’ is 100%, so you can be sure people will be talking about your new services in the area.

As a great welcome idea you could offer people a first touch/order discount code or even use them for building sign ups to your services by using the several postage paid services available.