Businesses are always seeking new and authentic ways to promote themselves, and everything from social media to printed products is utilized to connect with clients, potential customers, or the community. Promotional products are a smart way to put your business and brand in someone’s hands. Their use has been consistently popular for businesses of all sizes, because even a small token can be effective.
And one of the promotional items that companies underutilize is a calendar by mistakenly thinking that its use is limited. But promotional calendars, like other giveaways or promotional items, can be part of a robust marketing campaign that fills a need for your customers and connects with them in a memorable fashion.
People Love Useful Promotional Items
Everyone loves getting something for free, even if they might not use it. We’ve probably all snagged something that was being given away, even if we weren’t sure we would use it. But promotional products that consumers will really use and not just stick in a bag or drawer to be quickly forgotten tend to be popular with businesses since they extend the brand’s exposure over a longer period of time.
From water bottles to t-shirts to promotional calendars, we have these promo items at home and many of us use them regularly. These branded and useful promotional products are a huge win for both consumers and businesses because the freebie has made the customer’s life a little better, more convenient, or fun (or all three) and the branded item has kept the business’s name front and center.
Unique Marketing Strategies for Promotional Calendars
Businesses that integrate promotional calendars into their marketing campaigns bank on the fact that calendars are something that most people love to use. But handing out an attractive but otherwise empty calendar is a missed opportunity. Let’s look at several ways you can make your calendar a memorable and meaningful marketing tool.
Use Promotional Calendars to Make a Date for the Future
One of the unique aspects of using promotional calendars is that they give creators the perfect platform to put important future dates in front of the user in a few different ways.
- Businesses can pre-fill in the dates of sales, promotions, or even monthly deals on the calendar pages, giving regular or special events extra exposure to potential customers.
- Promotional calendars can also hold special discount codes or extra deals given just to calendar holders. Surprise sales on specific days, unique discount codes found only in promotional calendars, or even hints at upcoming sales or deals to watch out for printed right on the calendar days that the user can utilize to maximize their savings while driving them to your website or store.
- Traditional promotional calendars are developed to fit one calendar year, but they can be made to cover just about any timeframe. Seasonal businesses like lawn care companies could offer their customers a calendar that covers the six prime months of planting season. Businesses with a longer-range focus could create an 18-month or even two-year calendar.
Connect with a Local Passion
Promotional calendars are the perfect place to make a connection between a local organization and your business, allowing your business to share in the enthusiasm for things that your community cares about.
By pairing your promotional calendars with a local passion or interest, you can ensure that your campaign will be memorable and help your branding find even more traction with the community.
- Feature or note big events in your community every year that locals or newcomers will want to know about like farmer’s markets, local festivals, or other community activities that are planned well in advance.
- For promotional calendars that will be in the hands of families with young children, integrating the area school start and finish days, holidays, and other big events is a great way to make a connection with your community. You can even include seasonal sports schedules or popular school events like “prom night” to provide helpful details to your promotional calendars, increasing the chances that it will be used all year long.
- Including the local sports team’s schedule in your promotional calendars is a great way to make sure that your calendar is a go-to resource and not relegated to the junk drawer. Different from team sponsorship or becoming an official sponsor of an organization, simply promoting the local team’s matches or games can show your connection to the community as well as give fans a reason to keep your promotional calendars front and center all season long.
Tie Together Print and Digital
One of the benefits of printing promotional calendars is that they are not in digital form. So much of our communication is electronic that a plastic coil calendar or a saddle stitch book bound with heavy-duty staples can be a welcome change for many people. But this tactile treasure doesn’t have to be totally disconnected from your digital marketing efforts.
1 Integrate QR Codes on your calendar pages to take users directly to your website, promotional links, a landing page where they can learn about a new product or service, or even a link directly to a payment page. With the click of a smartphone camera, a QR code instantly links your printed calendar with your online presence. And since QR codes are intuitive, anyone with a smart device can use them with minimal explanations needed for them to succeed.
2 Use promotional calendars as incentives to grow your email circulation. When you want online website visitors to sign up to join your valuable email database, send them a promotional calendar as an incentive. People love to receive gifts or freebies, and historically rewarding people who agree to join an email list with a gift increases the number of people who sign up. Using a physical promotion to encourage more people to sign on to a valuable email list is a fantastic way to utilize a printed promotional item like a calendar.
Introduce Your Team
An unexpected but effective use of a promotional calendar is to focus on your employees, their jobs, and what they contribute to the business. Spotlighting long-time employees can build trust with potential customers and using space in your calendar to explain how valuable specific jobs or functions within your company are can show clients a peek behind the scenes.
Introducing every team member, highlighting a few, or taking time to include them in your calendar is a surprising way to make your calendar more personal.
Increase Brand and Product Awareness
Instead of a traditional calendar, consider making your next promotional project a catalog-calendar hybrid. Use the calendar to educate your consumer about your brand, the company’s history and what sets your business apart from others in the industry.
But take it one step further by putting key or important products on your calendar’s pages along with beautiful photos and clear graphics that tell the story of the product. Tying in a QR code for a quick purchase opportunity or adding a “calendar only” discount code to products can increase sales and encourage customers to scour the calendar for other chances to save on products or services.
Print Your Calendar
Printing promotional calendars gives consumers something they can use for a long period of time while taking advantage of the branding and marketing opportunities it provides. And since they will hold on to a calendar for months – or even years – make sure that you partner with a quality printer so your final product looks fantastic.
Dazzle Printing can help you design a winning calendar that you and your clients, potential customers and community will love all year long. Dazzle Printing’s print-on-demand model means you can order your calendars in low quantities and receive them quickly so you can get them into the hands of your clients and customers.
