Marketers are always looking for new ways to boost the impact of their social media marketing to reach more of their target audience and to drive leads generation. We find that one underused social media tool for marketers is branded merchandise. Marketing is at its most powerful when it works across the digital and real worlds. Here are 3 examples for using branded merchandise to fuel your social media marketing:

Increase events bookings by incentivising your audience to submit their questions early via social 

Today’s events marketers face great competition for an increasingly time-poor audience when it comes to delegate recruitment. One of the best ways to make your event stand out and to engage its target audience early, is to involve your prospective audience in developing the programme.

How can you achieve this? One way is to encourage your audience to submit their burning questions via your social channels. And for the first respondents, or all of them, budget allowing, you can offer a branded goodie bag at the event. We all know attending business events offer fantastic networking opportunities, but it can also be exhausting at times. So what better way to increase the enjoyment of the event than offering all your delegates an events kit consisting of branded pens, water, mints a notebook, sweets, tissues and a spare carrier bag on arrival. You can get this sponsored to help with the costs or use it as a focal point for making your own brand the star of the show.

Also, during the event, you can ask delegates to post pictures of themselves and the branded goodie bag on social, to further increase the reach of your brand amongst their professional network.

Increase the take up of your social media competitions by offering a branded prize

Madalyn Sklar is a Social Media influencer with over 62,000 global Twitter followers. Madalyn encourages her TwitterSmarter podcast listeners to review it in iTunes for a chance to win a branded phone holder as a prize. This promotional product completely supports her brand values and ensures the TwitterSmarter logo is clearly seen when people use their phones.

In addition to the podcast, Madalyn is also famous for her #TwitterSmarter Tweetchat. If you haven’t had a chance yet to join a Tweetchat and you need to grow your company’s Twitter presence, this is the one chat you should try first. It takes place 6PM every Thursday right here.

Reward engagement with your social channels by sending a gift to your customers

Most social media marketers use either Buffer or Hootsuite as scheduling tools for their posts. Here at LimeLight Publicity manage our growing presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook with Hootsuite. Did you know that Hootsuite sends out their popular Owly to customers who engage with them on their social channels?

Hootsuite acknowledges any feedback quickly, resolves any customer service matters and sends their much coveted Owly to their customers as a sign of their appreciation. As the Owly is so popular, users promote across their own social media channels how excited they are about receiving one. We all know user generated content (UGC) is gold dust to marketers and this is an easy to follow example of how to use promotional merchandise to boost your social media impact.

Here at LimeLight Publicity we have creativity and innovation at the heart of every project. Why not get in touch on with our expert team to explore what promotional product you could use to boost the impact of your social media marketing.