Promo Gift Blog: Interview with Premier Promotional Products
Jess Hart at Premier Promotional Products is interviewed by Vincent Borley at Promo Gift Blog.
What were your 3-5 best-selling promotional products last year?
Our best-selling promotional products last year were engraved or printed USBs and branded power banks. We are seeing more and more that our clients are looking for useful event giveaways and other corporate branded items that consumers will keep; the most effective merchandise delivering full impact.
We also continue to sell a lot of promotional mugs, printed pens and branded notebooks, which were reported as the most useful promotional gifts. Office desk areas prove to be a successful marketing tactic with brands’ logos in view on a daily basis by numerous employees and potential customers (research undertaken by the British Promotional Merchandise Association 2016).
What are the faster growing market segments for promotional products in your region?
We supply branded merchandise to a large variety of London West End Shows, including Billy Elliot, Shrek and Dirty Dancing, with a vast selection of promotional products including personalised magnets, bespoke keyrings, badges and branded fans.
We are also increasingly providing promotional merchandise for the Motor and Construction industries; it is great that we get to work with such a broad range of market segments as we offer branded and bespoke products suitable for everyone.
Which are your favourite promotional product trade shows and events and why?
We really enjoy the smaller, more intimate promotional product trade shows where we get a chance to speak to specialised merchandise suppliers on a one-to-one basis. We love the appointment system at Sourcing City Marketplace as we are able to discover everything a supplier offers and discuss ways we are able to work together even more efficiently to make our service even better for our end-user customers.
We also had a lovely time at The Advantage Group Catalogue Launch event and Promotional Products Trade Show; the trade show has a nice relaxed environment and there are a great variety of innovative products. The award ceremony is fantastic as it allows both distributors and suppliers the opportunity to stand out from the rest - and the food is also great! We are aiming to win the “Best Catalogue Cover” Award next year!
The British Promotional Merchandise Association (BPMA) Trade Show is another one of our favourites, it is a much larger scale and the merchandise suppliers have bigger stands with more branded products on display, so it is really great for getting lots of new, fresh ideas. The trade show has a busy and exciting atmosphere, and it is in a great location.
What are the biggest opportunities you see in your industry?
The biggest opportunity we have seen in our industry is our digital and online presence. We are constantly finding ways to expand our reach online and engage with our customers more regularly, through our social media sites and through our website. The launch of our new website blog is also a great way to provide extra value to our customers, as we post lots of interesting tips, images, videos and regular product news updates.
We utilise lots of different social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and we are creating more and more content for our YouTube channel, with video streaming becoming increasingly popular. Check out the short, light-hearted videos we created after the BPMA Trade Show and Sourcing City Marketplace last week.
We are proud that we continue to place in the Top 25 Sourcing City Distributor of the Year awards year on year, in 17th place for 2016 and we work hard to progress this every year as we believe that there is always room for improvement in everything we do.
Any examples of a good marketing campaign you like?
A rather creative marketing campaign the Premier Team enjoyed recently was for Promotional Products Week by the BPMA, it was for a really good cause aiming to raise £10,000 for Pancreatic Cancer UK.
Distributors and suppliers were encouraged to donate whilst also promoting their brand on social media using the hashtag #PromoteYourBrand. We donated to the cause and also took some really creative photographs and videos of our own branded merchandise, including Premier magnets and pens.
You can also find the article published by Promo Gift Blog.