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Promotional products often hold the key to effective advertising for your business. Promotional products can help increase your name recognition and sales, express your appreciation to customers and help bring customers back to your store again and again and again. The trick is knowing how to choose the right promotional gifts and itesm and how to deliver them effectively.

One of the secrets to using promotional products and business gifts well is to fit the products you choose to the image and purpose of your business. Your hardware store can benefit from promotional products in a number of different ways ' but it calls for taking a step beyond the most typical uses and items that are used as advertising gifts. Some examples of effective promotional advertising for a hardware business might be:

Customer appreciation gifts
One of the most common uses for promotional products in retail is as a customer appreciation or thank you gift. The variety of promotional merchandise that fit a hardware retailer is enormous, and easily adaptable to fit various special promotions. You might include a printed wooden stirrer with a purchase of house paint, or drop complimentary promotional tape measures printed with your store name into the bag with every purchase. If you duplicate keys as part of your business, include promotional keyrings with a completed order. For larger orders or to entice business from contractors and other high-volume buyers, you might woo company representatives with gifts like tool sets, bike repair kits and promotional torches.

Increase name recognition
Increasing name recognition is another major goal when using promotional products. One of the easiest and most traditional ways to do this is to recognize all of your customers during the holiday season with promotional calendars. You can pair the calendar with a year long promotion by offering a different free gift with any purchase each month. The more often you bring your customers back, the more often they'll buy and the higher your profits will climb.

Foster good will in your community
There are so many ways that a hardware store can foster good will for themselves with the community. How many of the non-profit organizations in your community offer transportation for their users? Why not put your name on display in every one of their vehicles by providing them with an emergency automobile tool kit for each vehicle? Sponsor a youth activity group and provide t-shirts for each child in the club ' with your name on them, of course.

Purchase Incentives and Promotions
Increase sales of products with a high profit margin ' or that have slow sales ' by using promotional products as purchase incentives. When you're competing with other retailers who can match or beat your price on an item, a promotional giveaway can give you an edge in marketing. You might even try installing a loyalty programme for regular customers where they can earn points toward promotional merchandise like MP3 players, complete tool sets, USB flash drives and gourmet travel and leisure gifts.

Take the time to sit down and evaluate your marketing strategy and find out how promotional products can kick your sales into overdrive.

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