Almost anything can be branded with a company’s name or logo and used for promotion. Common items include t-shirts, caps, key chains, posters, bumper stickers, pens, mugs, or mouse pads. The largest product category for promotional products is wearable items, which make up more than 30% of the total. Eco-friendly promotional products such as those created from recycled materials and bamboo, a renewable resource, are also experiencing a significant surge in popularity.

Brand awareness is the most common use for promotional items. Other objectives that marketers use promotional items to facilitate include employee relations and events, tradeshow traffic-building, public relations, new customer generation, dealer and distributor programs, new product introductions, employee service awards, not-for-profit programs, internal incentive programs, safety education, customer referrals, and marketing research.

Being a print provider, we tend to use note pads and post it notes as our main hand out/give away. Sure we have other swag, such as branded clothing, mugs and pens that our employees use more than a client might, but the bonus with this is that we can see that these items are being used by clients and prospects alike, and it is always good to get a referral from a client and during the meeting we see our information on one of our pad’s or our post-it sitting on my new prospects desk.