Branding is at the heart of every business.
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While strategies like building beautiful social media profiles and writing online content are extremely popular these days, offline branding still has a role to play in growing brand awareness.
And creating branded merchandise is a strategy that definitely comes with its fair share of advantages.
There are plenty of ways to leverage physical merchandise to spread the word about your brand and build customer loyalty among existing customers.
These include handing branded merchandise out for free at industry events or along with purchases of your regular products, or even making merch prizes in promotional competitions.
For branded merchandise to be effective, however, it has to be well-designed.
Keep reading for some top tips for designing effective branded merchandise for your company.
Secure Professional Graphic Design Services
If you’re planning to create branded merchandise, the first step you’ll need to take is to invest in professional graphic design services.
Physical merchandise will only be effective as branding tools if they look great, so it’s vital that you enlist professionals to create them.
After all, there’s no point in spending lots of money on printing services if your designs aren’t visually appealing.
Another reason to hire professionals to design your company merchandise is to ensure that the designs are in line with your brand guidelines.
A top-notch graphic designer will work with you to understand the different elements of your brand, including elements such as your font type, your brand colours and any slogans you might have, and incorporate them into your merchandise.
Many companies, especially smaller ones, don’t have the budget to employ a dedicated graphic designer in-house.
If this is the case for you, it’s highly recommended that you work with a professional graphic design service on your branded merchandise.
Select Merchandise That’s Relevant To Your Audience
All your branding efforts need to be geared towards a specific audience to be effective, and this includes your physical merchandise.
Designing company merch involves more than creating items that are aesthetically pleasing and in line with your brand: you should also produce branded merchandise that the people you ultimately intend to sell to actually want to own.
Before spending any money on printing services, you first want to choose the sort of merchandise your audience will appreciate.
For instance, if your target market is mostly made up of older professionals, planners and elegant pens might be the way to go.
On the other hand, if your audience consists of teenagers, water bottles and cute stickers will probably be more appealing.
Another way to tailor your merchandise to your audience is to create designs based on calendar events that are relevant to your target market.
Some examples of holiday merchandise include holiday-themed stickers, branded Christmas baubles, and annual notebooks or calendars in the lead-up to New Year’s.
When developing both holiday merchandise and evergreen merchandise, knowing your audience is crucial to selecting the right merch items as well as finetuning your branded designs.
You may opt to use unique colour themes for your holiday merch that align with your brand colours, for instance.
This is key to truly personalising your holiday merchandise and making it feel effortlessly ‘limited edition’.
Go For Quality Over Quantity
When creating branded merchandise, it’s always important to prioritise quality over quantity.
While it might be tempting to find the cheapest design or printing service out there and churn out endless merchandise of questionable quality, this is likely to have a negative impact on your business.
There are many ways to boost the quality of your branded merchandise.
One example would be to use high-quality sticker paper: to maximise the brand value your stickers create, you don’t want them to fade or fall off quickly.
Another is to perform internal quality checks on all merchandise produced externally to make sure their quality is up to scratch and that their visuals align with your existing brand.
The main reason to produce quality merchandise is that, in your customers’ hands, your merchandise will reflect the standards maintained by your company.
High quality merchandise will create a positive mental image of your brand, while low quality items will have the opposite effect.
So don’t skimp on the quality of your merch, because poorly manufactured freebies are never a treat to receive.
Distribute Outside Your Company’s Immediate Community
Among your primary goals when creating branded merchandise should be to extend the reach of your company.
This won’t happen if you limit distribution to your immediate community: to maximise the effectiveness of your merchandise as acquisition tools, it’s vital to get them in the hands of as many people as possible.
One way to distribute merchandise to more people is to attend industry events.
These networking opportunities allow you to hand out branded merchandise to potential customers or even prospective business partners.
Being able to forge these connections and ensure your company makes a strong first impression is paramount to bolstering not only your brand visibility but also ensuring that people make positive associations with your company.
Another great method for distributing merchandise to ensure a far reach is to build a digital community and send out merchandise to members as rewards for winning online competitions or lotteries.
Online competitions can stir up plenty of interest in your company if they’re managed well. Again, you’ll find a strong social media presence to be very valuable for this approach.
No matter which approach you go with (or even if you go with both!), it’s undeniable that creating branded merch can be an incredibly effective offline marketing strategy, provided you’re willing to step out of your comfort zone. Strive to distribute outside your company’s immediate community to maximise your brand’s reach.
Handing out branded merchandise is a great way to boost your brand visibility and build loyalty among both new and existing customers.
However, it’s vital to design company merchandise in the right way.
Be sure to trial the strategies and tips we’ve shared today to see how creating and distributing branded merchandise can support your business.
With the right approach in place, your branded merchandise can play a pivotal role in the organic promotion of your business and the growth of your customer base.