Efficiency of your promotional product

It is that time again for presenting your product or service at a convention, fair, show or any other venue.  What product should you choose for give-aways or promotional merchandise?

The obvious true and tried choices that always come to mind are imprinted pens, t-shirts, mugs, wristbands, key chains, lanyards, small notepads, and those weird novelty items that make little sense after a short while.

So what is the best choice the produces the best result for your marketing dollar? One has to think of the product usefulness: The longer your potential client hangs to the item with your brand printed on it, the longer your promotional item pays off. If you stick with this simple idea, your marketing dollars will be put to much better use.

Such items as pens, t-shirts, wristbands, and mugs have a much higher chance of seeing a substantial amount of use, and in turn your brand visibility. Many companies choose to stay with these good choices consistently and in some cases over several decades.  However, not many companies realize that even a higher efficiency promotional product exists that can offer much more than a conventional choice.

USB flash drives offer both the usefulness and attractiveness in the modern times. The drives have a great staying power with your potential client by staying close to the most often used electronic device – the computer. With various capacities fulfilling the need from storing basic documents to storing large libraries of music and videos, the USB flash drive will carry your brand anywhere your potential client will go.

We cannot leave out the cost of your promotional product out of the promotional product efficiency. The USB flash drives will drive up a higher cost in comparison to pens, t-shirts, and other conventional promotional items. However, if the product staying power is considered, one can understand that the extra cost of the USB flash drive is justified by potentially substantially larger staying power.

The ability of the USB flash drive to work with a laptop or a computer, and its ability of substantial staying power with your potential client, make it one of the best choices as a promotional product.

 

Promotional USB 3.0 flash drives

There has been a lot of buzz about the next generation of USB 3.0 400MB/s over the last couple of years. What does the new standard mean for the promotional industry?

So far there has not been sufficient backing from large powerhouses such as Intel and AMD to propel the new USB standard to new heights. The good news is that Intel is planning on committing to the technology in 2012. With Intel backing others will be hard pressed to follow suit.

Currently, the prices on the promotional flash drives are double of the USB 2.0/1.1 standard. The transfer speeds are important in the promotional drives, however USB 2.0 offers plenty of speed for storing documents, presentations, music, etc..  There is really no need for higher speeds unless you plan on storing very large amounts of data (16G up to 128GB) for videos or computer backup.

We all know that price of the drive is important when ordering hundreds or thousands of drives for an event. The idea is to get your potential clients or customers to see your brand/company name as much as possible. Promoting with a practical drive that has enough space for common data storage is the best way to ensure product use and name visibility.

The flash drive with 1GB data storage is perfect for documents/presentations as well as occasional storage of high resolution pictures; the 4GB drive expands into regularly storing high-resolution photos, documents/presentations, and a couple of video files. Reducing storage space makes sense based on the promotional needs, however increasing the storage space has to be based on a significant justification for doing so. The significant price increase can hurt your budget, however the clients may not always appreciate the higher storage space.

The USB 3.0 standard may not be far away from being used in the promotional drives. It can offer faster transfer speeds for the more streamlined experience; however, for the time being, the 3.0 only represents a higher cost.