Top Ten Tips - Pens

Take a look in your pen drawer or pen pot. The chances are you'll find a promotional pen (or twelve) there, and all of them are slowly and silently giving you a message. The printed message on a promotional pen is a sublime, powerful, thing. That's why you'll find promotional pens in any league table of effective promotional gifts. But, there's pens, and there's pens aren't there? Here at RT Promotions we supply thousands of clients with branded pens, and so we get to see good ideas as well as the bad ones. We'd like to share some of our tips with you.

1 - Choose your pen carefully and with your required print in mind. In general, pens have a limited 'print area', and some of them are VERY limited allowing you to simply print a single line of text. If you're happy to have just a one colour print onto the barrel and aren't too worried about the size of the design, then the worlds your oyster. If not, talk to us and we'll find a solution that's right for you.

2 - Where and how are you going to be using the pens? If you're letting people come and grab a pen from your stand at a trade show, maybe a cheap and cheerful one is the way to go... but, if you're wanting to give a good impression, make sure the pen you choose will meet those requirements. Ask us, we'll tell you.

3 - Where possible, instead of using white barrelled pens, why not choose a colour that matches or compliments your brand. We can even create pens made of a mixture of colours. That way, before we even print onto the pen, the customer starts to think of the pen as 'your' pen.

4 - Consider using a track-able unique telephone number so you can measure their effectiveness.

5 - Do you need 'BLACK' ink? If you do, then take care. Especially with the low-cost budget pens where blue ink is all you'll be able to get.

6 - Everybody you meet will already have a pen, so why will they keep and use yours? Is the pen good enough to make the recipient choose yours over their existing one? If not, guess where the pens' going!

7 - Take a look at your favourite promotional pen and consider why you like it so much. Is it the colour, the feel of it, or maybe it simply writes nicely. Now seek out those same 'features' to the pens you're looking at.

8 - Promotional Pens can last a long time. We regularly see examples, still in use, that are several years old, so make sure your message doesn't 'date'.

9 - Put a 'call to action' on your Promotional Pens. They're a marketing tool and a daily 'memory hook', so invite your prospects to do something. Visit your website perhaps?

10 - Purchase more than you think you'll need. They'll disappear before you know it and it'll make the cost per pen cheaper so you won't mind giving them away!!