Swag is a great choice for high-impact and low-cost promotion that can be used as a stand-alone strategy or to support all your sales channels.
Either way, it provides great ROI and will boost brand awareness and recognition, increase engagement with your brand and drive increased sales.
Swag can improve your brand reputation and strengthen your corporate identity. It can also help you move prospects down the sales funnel and improve relationships with your customers.
You can even use swag for advocacy, customer loyalty, and referral programs. It really is incredibly versatile and effective – all for a very low initial investment, that continues to yield results long after you have handed it out!
So, how do you use swag effectively in your marketing? How do you generate quality leads and maximize the benefits of all your other advertising channels?
In this guide, we’re covering what swag is, how it will benefit your market outreach, how to use swag for lead generation, and how to integrate swag into your other advertising channels!
Let’s jump right in!
Swag is the branded promotional merchandise that brands use to promote their business and their brand. Swag is usually given away as ‘freebies’ to the public, leads, customers, and employees.
Swag is a great promotion tool that stands out from other sales promotion techniques in that is tangible, tactile, and useful to the recipient.
The way people engage with swag is very different from the way they engage with other forms of advertising. It is appreciated and many consumers will actively seek it out!
The most common and popular examples of this promotion are t-shirts, pens and notebooks, drinkware, USB sticks, tote bags, and swag packs. Swag packs are packaged bags or boxes of branded goodies that come in an attractive package.
The graph below shows common types of promotional products and the percentage of people who own one:
We’ve all received some swag at some point, and most of us still use it regularly. According to Sage, 80% of consumers have at least one promotional product, 53% use a promotional product at least once a week and 60% keep their promotional products for up to two years!
So, what are the benefits of swag for your marketing? Let’s take a look:
Swag is used to promote the brand or business, specific product lines or services, and events.
Swag creates or reinforces corporate identity, increases brand awareness and recognition, garners many impressions, and is usually much cheaper than paid print or online advertising.
Swag is also used to gain new leads, nurture existing leads and drive sales. It can even be used to gather information for your customer database by asking people to fill out a form to receive their swag.
The Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) 2019 Global Ad Impressions Study found that promotional products are the most cost-effective and high-impact tool available for their clients.
When they worked out the cost per impression (CPI) for swag in comparison to print and digital ads, swag consistently earned a greater ROI!
It might sound too simple and too good to be true, but the numbers back it up. Here are some statistics to highlight the benefits of using promotional swag in your branding:
In the simplest terms, lead generation is all about finding the right target audience, making contact and connecting with them, and building a relationship with them.
Swag is a great way to make that first contact a positive, engaged, and memorable experience for your lead.
If you’re using swag to generate leads, make sure you’re giving it to the right people. Do your research, perfect your buyer persona and then tailor your swag products to meet their needs and appeal to their image and values.
Once you have done that, you have a relevant, attractive, and useful offering for them. From there, you need to reach them and make those connections, so that you can develop those relationships and convert leads to customers.
So, how have other companies used swag for promotion to successfully generate leads?
Let’s take a look at some examples:
In 2017, Google released it’s smaller smart speaker, the Google Home Mini. To generate awareness of the product and get people excited about it, they set up little donut pop-up shops in different cities.
People could go in, ask the smart speaker a question and then receive a mystery box that either contained donuts or a Google Home Mini!
Beauty brand Glossier gave out branded sweatshirts to micro-influencers, which were posted with the #glossierpink. They often gave the influencers a discount code to give their followers – a win-win for everyone.
Every year at the Chicago Auto Show, Ford runs custom swag giveaways that include collectable cars for kids. They limited the number of cars and only give them away at specific times, making them scarce and adding a sense of urgency.
Wholefoods curated a boxes of ‘beauty essentials’ from their product line and used a social media giveaway to promote their upcoming beauty sale. They made the contest easy to enter and included products that can be bought from their stores.
They limited the number of boxes and used them to generate buzz on social media, which increased the reach of their market outreach for the sale. The contest also got loads to people to engage with their brand and to covet the products being promoted. A sure way to get more people interested in buying for the first time!
Add swag to your online outreach and use it to attract leads to your website and social media. Paid social media adverts are 44% more effective when they involve swag.
People also love social media giveaways and contests, which can increase your online reach and engagement, while offering a way to get your swag into the right hands.
Using brand ambassadors and social media influences to reach huge numbers of your target audience is a highly effective way to increase brand awareness and recognition. They’re also a great way to garner new leads!
Great branded swag that is high quality, attractive, and desirable is one way to get your products in front of the right people, with a stamp of approval from the person they all look up to.
You use swag as part of your paid campaign, as a free gift in the hopes of it being featured, or as a thank you gift to show your appreciation.
Events and conferences are great for lead generation because participants are already people interested in your niche. That’s why they’re there, after all.
You can use swag to draw out the warmer leads and connect with the ones who will be most likely to buy from you by offering swag as an incentive to participate in a survey or demo.
That way, you’re already personally engaging with them and you can gather information to use for personalized interactions down the line too.
Check out this video by Event MB for more on how to curate a great swag bag for conferences and events:
Use swag to connect with the prospects you would normally reach out to individually, by email, phone, or in person.
Adding some great swag to that first contact makes the first impression positive, and more memorable for them.
This is especially useful for B2B outreach, where you’re connecting with a specific, known person at the company.
Personalize your swag for them and give them something they will really value and that will resonate with them.
If they’re into golf, give them items that they will use, such as a golf shirt, cap and pen. You can even add their name or initials if you want to make it really personal.
When we think of promotional items, we often think of external, sales-driven marketing. However, internal advertising is something you can’t overlook.
Improving employee experience by making your employees feel seen, valued, and appreciated is a surefire way to retain great employees and attract top talent.
You can use swag to show appreciation to your staff, welcome recruits, or foster unity and reinforce company values.
What a company does for its employees is becoming a huge factor in the company’s reputation and the reputation of its brand. Online communities and connections have created a space where employees are seen and heard by their peers, and by the general public.
When employees are happy and feel a sense of belonging and loyalty to the company, they provide better service to customers and advocate more for their company online and in person.
Swag works really well as a reward for any activity that sends you new leads directly or publicly endorses your brand.
If you have a referral program or a customer loyalty program, you can use swag to gamify the process and encourage participation.
You can create tiered rewards that encourage people to do more to ‘win’ a better prize. This can be a really effective way to boost engagement with your programs and improve the effectiveness of the program.
Give swag to customers who refer a friend, leave reviews, or follow you on social media. You can also give them swag and ask them to share a picture of it on social media, with a unique hashtag.
Most people are more than happy to share a positive experience and something that made them feel special! This generates valuable social proof for your brand and improves your chances of gaining new leads.
Swag has a physical presence that few other advertising methods have. You can use this to your advantage when you’re developing your brand identity.
The types of products you use for your swag, who they will appeal to, and how you brand or present them will add a sense of who you are and what you’re all about.
Saas company Salesforce does a great job of this with their animated characters, plush toys and stickers. Their #wheresastro campaign is especially successful:
Choosing the right swag will yield great marketing ROI. Choosing the wrong swag, on the other hand, can reduce the effectiveness of your marketing, or even damage your brand’s image!
To choose the best swag, consider the following:
The right marketing swag will be a walking endorsement of your brand and portray your brand in the best possible light!
It will augment and strengthen all your other marketing efforts, generate new leads, break into new markets and improve your sales.
Marketing swag can also help you retain customers and increase customer loyalty. It can help you improve employee experience and your company’s reputation with prospective employees.
Marketing swag is a versatile and highly effective marketing technique. It can be used as a stand-alone campaign or as part of any of your other marketing strategies.
Adding swag to marketing can increase your reach and engagement in a meaningful way to boost brand awareness, brand recognition and reinforce your corporate identity.
Swag can draw in new leads and help you nurture them at every point of your sales funnel to increase your sales and revenue.
Best of all, it is an inexpensive method, that gives and gives, long after the initial investment!
In this guide we have covered all the basics to get you going – how will you use swag to skyrocket your marketing?
Advertising Specialty Institute: Global Ad Impressions Study (2020)
Advertising Specialty Institute: Global Ad Impressions Study (2019)
Brandon Gaille: 36 Promotional Products Industry Statistics, Trends & Analysis
Element Three: 5 Ways Company Swag Boosts Company Culture
Quality Logo Products Blog: 50 Crazy Stats and Facts About the Promotional Products Industry
Sage: Let the Facts Do the Talking: 25 Stats About Promotional Products
Sage: 25 Insane (…but true!) Facts About Promotional Products
Swag promotion is the use of branded promotional products that are given to the public, leads, customers, and even employees. Marketing swag or company swag consists of desirable consumer goods that are uniquely branded to represent the company. Popular examples of swag include outer-wear apparel, mugs/travel cups, pens, notepads, USB sticks, and tote bags. Check out the full guide for more on how to use swag in your marketing.
The most popular swag products in 2024 are outer apparel like shirts and sweatshirts, tote bags, notebooks and pens, drinkware, and electronics like USB sticks. The best swag to choose for your business is swag that is congruent with your brand identity, appeals to your target audience, and is high-quality. Check out the full guide for more on how to use swag in your marketing.
Many businesses make customized swag products. Choose ones that offer good quality products that are made to last and that can add your custom branding to your products. There are loads of companies to choose from but some popular options are Zazzle, Allied Shirts, Café Press, and Red Bubble. Check out the full guide for more on how to use swag in your marketing.