Running a small business takes making the right decisions. How best can you advance your business? What is the most cost-effective way to market your services? The best answers usually involve a combination of steps. If you have been thinking about the benefits of adding branded merchandise to your workplace, you should know that it can help promote your business every day. Here’s how.

1. Create Brand Familiarity

If you’re like a lot of small businesses, you need to keep building your presence online and in person. Brand familiarity can mean the difference between success and failure for small businesses, especially in the early years. By adding branded merchandise to your company, you are giving a visual reminder to customers that your business exists. The more they see your brand, the more likely they are to buy your products and services.

2. Diversify Your Marketing Strategy

Small businesses don’t usually have a ton of money for marketing strategies, so you have to make every dollar count. Merchandise with your logo can be a cost-effective way to get your name out there. An order for shirts, mugs, stickers or other merchandise might expand your reach as effectively as an expensive online ad campaign. If you’re trying to stick to a tight budget, branded merchandise is also easier to do on a smaller scale.

3. Build Brand Loyalty

Building a regular clientele is the dream of most small businesses. It’s often easier to keep one customer happy than it is to constantly find new ones. A free water bottle or pen set with purchase can help to ensure that your brand stays within a customer’s view for the next year or two. If they share these supplies with a friend or relative, you might get new leads from a satisfied source.

4. Welcome New Employees

One of the best ways to keep employees is to establish a company culture that meets employee needs and gives as much as it requires. Building a kit of branded merchandise can be an excellent motivational tool to onboard new employees, reward high-performing workers or incentivize participation in team-building activities. Every time they take the water bottle or wear the t-shirt outside the business, they help to market your company as well.

5. Provide Lasting Promotional Materials

The best thing about branded merchandise is that it can last much longer in customers’ minds than an online or print ad. Even business cards tend to get shoved in a wallet or drawer and forgotten. With merchandise that the customer can wear or use daily, he or she gets a regular reminder of the benefits of your business. In exchange, your company gets a promotion of your services to others.

Branded merchandise is a simple, effective way to create inexpensive advertising, improve brand familiarity with your customers and maintain a positive company culture. By reading about these benefits, you will understand how you can use branded merchandise to keep building your business for the future.

HALO is the global leader in branded merchandise, uniform programs, and recognition and incentive solutions. We partner with our clients to break through the clutter of our media-saturated world and connect their brands to customers, employees, and other audiences critical to their success.