For the very same reasons that people love to wear slogan tees and hoodies, promotional clothing can act as a highly effective promotion tool for many businesses. Yes, a number of other popular promotional items (such as flash drives, wireless charger, smart water bottles, desk accessories, touch tools, sanitizing box, calendars, adult pencil set and coloring book, etc.) can also be a great help in building brand awareness and will often be part of your overall promotional strategy. In this article, however, we’ll look into the efficacy of promotional clothing or branded apparel vis-à-vis the promotion strategy of a business.
Now, when it comes to promotional clothing, we should always consider two types of promotional clothing: workplace clothing and branded apparels that a business hands out to its existing and prospective customers. The first applies to businesses that have a public front, such as clothing stores, food chains, department stores, delivery services and the like. Branded workplace apparels are most commonly used by franchises for the purpose of creating immediate brand recognition, although standalone businesses may also use them. Apart from building brand awareness, standardized workplace apparel (branded or not) endows a certain prestige to the business facility in question.
In this connection, we must also mention that if your company staff wears branded workwear and if you also gift branded apparels to your customers as promo items, you must take care to distinctly differentiate the two.
Reasons to Start Using Promotional Clothing
1. Create brand awareness and increase recognition
Right kind of promo clothing items works as great marketing tools when it comes to building brand awareness.
For instance, an interesting-looking branded tee or hoodie can often act as conversation starters between friends or acquaintances. If your friend likes what you’re wearing, he will often ask you about it. Accordingly, a business will receive a lot of so-called word-of-mouth advertisement from its gifted promotional clothing items.
In fact, without knowing, people wearing your branded merchandise will often serve as your brand ambassadors! And needless to say, this will save you a good deal of money in marketing costs.
And brand awareness is closely followed by brand recognition. When people see your customers and/or your staff dressed in the branded clothing, they will immediately recognize your logo after a few times. Subsequently, the next time they come across it (in a different context or medium, such as in an online ad), they won’t feel like it is something new to them, even if they have never been your customer up to that point.
Recognition acts as a source of trust and people are much more likely to invest in your products and services if they can already recognize your brand and feel familiar to it.
2. Engage a Number of Our Senses
It has been remarked that the more senses any marketing effort involves, better is its chance at success. Often, we pay too close an attention to the visual appeal of a product. However, senses such as smell, and touch can work as powerful memory boosters by creating connections.
For example, a billboard ad doesn’t involve many senses. An online ad appeals to our senses even less (since it lacks any distinct sort of physicality). However, wearing a piece of branded apparel creates a strong tactile experience which is often highly effective in forging a valuable mental connection and sense of familiarity with your brand/company.
3. Make People Feel Part of a Team
This is obviously true for your staff but for your customers as well. As for your staff wearing branded work clothes with matching color schemes, logos, etc., this helps strengthen the sense of being a team.
In this connection, we must mention that it is important to pay enough attention to the quality of your promotional clothing. The style and the design are important, but you must also make sure to source high quality fabric for your branded clothing. After all, your employees will wear them for long hours, meaning they should feel comfortable in those workwear. And needless to say, the quality of your promotional clothing becomes even more important if you want your customers to keep using it time and again.
To go back to the feeling of being a team, this actually extends to your customers as well. And the reason is what most marketing gurus repeat ad infinitum: that the most successful brands actually sell lifestyles, and not simply products. So, give some thought to what kind of lifestyle your brand propagates and design your promotional clothing accordingly. In other words, apparels as well as other promo items that match the lifestyle your brand champions will help forge a strong connection with your customers to your brand.
4. Become Standouts at Large events
It is often so extremely difficult to stand out and make your presence noticeable at large industry fairs and events. And this is especially true for SMEs. However, right kind of promotional clothing can often bail you out of this predicament.
The event will provide a much higher marketing value when you dress your team in attractive branded promotional clothing. Better even if you can make some of the visitors and customers wear them, too. In fact, large events make for a great place to hand out promo apparels, and as long as they are attractive enough, your visitors will require little persuasion for sporting them at the event itself!
