When it comes to marketing, you may find that your mind is on one thing and one thing alone. For a lot of people, marketing only ever refers to social media promotions and online activity. And that’s only natural. In today’s very digital climate, it’s hard not to want to put all of your efforts into online tactics. However, that’s a very limited way to look at your marketing strategy. Because today, offline options are definitely just as effective for the right companies. And one of the most exciting tactics that you can use is promotional merchandise. Especially when you give it away! Because who doesn’t love free stuff? So if you want to broaden out your marketing materials and really make merchandise work for you, here’s what you need to do.

1. Make Your Choices Relevant To Your Audience

The most important thing for you to do here, is to make sure that your marketing choice is relevant to your audience. The promotional material you use, should be something that they are interested in or that will be useful to them. You can’t just pluck an idea from your mind. Instead, you need to be thinking about want kind of merchandise will be a) relevant and linked to your brand, and b) your audience will actually want. Otherwise, it won’t work.

2. Think About Events

Next, you’re going to want to think about the events that you could put on or throw. Because events are the perfect place to hand out free stuff. Maybe you want to have your own party? Or could you attend an event or host at a show? Take a look into what kind of events are going on in your industry, and go from there.

3. Give Away Freebies

But you don’t have to hand out free items in order to get them in front of your audience. We all know that branded merchandise is a good way to stay relevant in your customers’ minds. So why not send them as packaging inserts so that they get the freebie as a reward for purchasing? This is not only a simple way to get the merch out, but it’s a great method of customer loyalty too.

4. Host Giveaways

Then, you could also think about hosting giveaways so that you can give out useful branded merchandise for free. These should be things that benefit your audience. You may find that links like bags, notebooks, and power banks make for great promotional giveaways and will interest your audience. So get started with one choice and see what results you get.

5. Ask Your Audience What They Want

And finally, if you want to make sure that you know what kind of promotional merchandise to go with, just ask. Or, maybe you want to know where your audience wants to receive merchandise, or even what content they want, asking always helps. If you just try to think about what your audience will want, you may be getting it wrong. But asking for feedback and running surveys really helps you to just get it right.