6 Marketing Ideas for Promotional Products Distributors in 2016

As a professional in the promotional products industry, you’re great at coming up with creative ideas for your clients. But lots of distributor sales reps and principals still have trouble with online marketing, especially if they don’t have an in-house marketing team to take care of it for them. Independent reps and smaller distributorships have to worry about serving their clients AND marketing their own business, even though both of those tasks can be full-time jobs!

Bonus Content: Your Guide to the State of Social Media.

Get Yours Now

We’ve put together this list of inventive ways distributors can kick-start their 2016 marketing plans. Even if you’ve got a lot on your plate, you should make time to put these ideas into action for the long-term health of your business. If you start now, you’ll be ready in January just in time to talk to clients about their 2016 project needs.

1. Give your email database a makeover.

Your contact list is the backbone of your business, so it pays to keep it growing. From email newsletters to drip campaigns to more complex nurturing, the options for reaching out to your contacts are nearly endless. But why spend time developing interesting, high-performing campaigns if your audience is small and badly curated?

Make it your first resolution in 2016 to prune your current list of bad data, consolidate all your contacts into one system and then start finding ways to expand. At a bare minimum, make sure every past client is imported into your email platform, either from your CRM or email contacts. If you’ve got a stack of business cards gathering dust, enter those as well. You can also export your LinkedIn connections and add them to your database.

As for growing your list, put some tried-and-true methods to use, like including lead capture forms. (Try OptinMonster for a user-friendly experience.) You can also ask past clients for referrals; consider offering a small token of appreciation for those who respond. Attending local networking events is another smart way to make new connections.

Even if you don’t immediately turn these new contacts into clients, you now have a foundation of leads that you can nurture and convert down the road when they’re ready to buy.

2. Get visual.

If you haven’t already expanded your online presence to Instagram and Pinterest, 2016 is the time to do it. Promo distributors rely heavily on visuals to make sales — more than most B2B industries. Use that to your advantage by highlighting your favorite creative and beautiful products to spark your followers’ interest.

For inspiration, keep an eye on the #promotionalproducts hashtag on Instagram and Pinterest and follow your fellow industry pros. When posting products from a supplier, make sure the item has high-quality photography. You can also post your own projects and success stories, as well as more lighthearted fare like fun snaps of your office, team or pets.

The next generation of promotional products buyers engages with content differently than their predecessors. Focusing on visuals is a great way to engage those younger buyers by speaking their language.

3. Double down on video content.

You already know video is a natural fit for promotional products, making it easy to showcase a creative product while explaining its features and benefits. So why not start producing your own?

Video has the advantage of humanizing your brand by putting a face and a voice to the name. You can highlight interesting products from vendors (even straight from the floor of a trade show), interview product experts, talk about your favorite trends and show off the fantastic work you’ve done for clients in the past.

Even if your production values aren’t quite ready for the big screen, video content will engage prospects and give them a better idea of who you are and what you can offer.

Bonus: Now that Facebook gives posts that use its own native video format more organic traffic, you’ll see increased reach as well as better engagement with your video content.

4. Explore pay-to-play social media.

Even if you already have an active Facebook business page, you may not be getting the most benefit out of it. By using Facebook’s paid “boost” feature on a post you think will perform well, you can reach new audiences and generate more likes, comments and views.

You can even customize the goals and the type of audience you want to reach with your post. And since 85 percent of people who like brands on Facebook recommend those brands to others, it’s extra important to get the right people liking your page because they’ll tell their friends about you.

Best of all, this strategy will barely make a dent in your budget. Check out the results Buffer was able to achieve with just $5 per day!

5. Give retargeting a try.

If someone visits your website, don’t just let them disappear into the Internet when they leave! You can stay on their radar through the magic of retargeting. In layman’s terms, this means that once a visitor has been to your site or online catalog, you can then use a network like Adroll to continue to show ads for your services on other websites they visit. This means that you’re more likely to bring back window shoppers and turn them into buyers, plus you’ll get a boost in brand awareness from prolonged, regular exposure to your business.

You’ve probably been retargeted by hundreds of brands without knowing it. Think about how some ads seem to be able to read your mind about what you’re in the market to buy; that’s the power of retargeting.

6. Automate your marketing.

By far the easiest way to jump-start your business in 2016 is to outsource your email and social marketing to someone else so you can spend 100 percent of your time on your clients. “Do it for me” (DIFM) will be an emerging trend next year, and it’s easy to see why. For small and independent sales professionals, DIY marketing takes up precious hours each week, but paying an agency or contractor to run your email and social marketing is out of reach for many people’s budgets.

DIFM hits a sweet spot between the two extremes. Using an automated platform offers you the time-saving benefits of hiring a marketing firm at the price of a DIY tool — far cheaper than any agency could ever be.

OutboundEngine’s automated marketing service takes all the work off your plate. Take a look at a few of the campaigns we’ve sent on behalf of our distributor clients this year:

Wrap-Up

The promotional products industry is ripe for savvy marketers to make a name for themselves because too few distributors are taking advantage of the full range of online marketing options available. If you have the time and the interest, make 2016 the year you leave your comfort zone when it comes to marketing your business. Otherwise, get an expert to tackle the work for you. We’d be glad to help.