Why Use Brandable Promotional Giveaways for your Website

  Increase return traffic, keep more customers and improve your name recognition by "Branding" electronic products and giving them away.

In the bad old days, a business owner would spend thousands on items printed with company names, logos and contact information... only to give them away in an effort to improve brand awareness & name recognition, keep current customers and attract new ones.

They probably wrote most of it off as "Advertising" but we're not talking about ads in the Yellow Pages here. I'm referring to pens & pencils, calendars, notepads, key fobs, checkbook covers, posters, small clocks or calculators... you get the picture.

Today it's easier, and much cheaper, for a website owner to do essentially the same thing with electronic products.

Easier, because there are promo items that you can get almost instantly and start giving away as soon as you upload them to your website.

Cheaper in three ways: First, because you pay only once whether you give away ten or ten thousand. Second, because they are just generally less expensive than their real-world counterparts. And thirdly, with the right software you can create a lot of them by yourself.

It's up to you to decide what type of promo is most appropriate for your website and what may be most interesting and/or most useful to your average visitor.

The essential consideration is that your promo must display your website name and/or logo and your URL. If possible, it must also have a clickable link to your website.

No matter what you choose, to get the best results, your promo tool must have some Perceived Value for the user

If your giveaway is perceived as having little or no value it will do more damage than good. For example, if you are giving away a desktop tool such as a calendar program, you can compare it to a similar tool that others charge $9.99 for. This increases it's value as a promotional giveaway and makes it much more likely to be downloaded and used.

If your promo is useful and has value, your users are also more likely to share them with their friends. This brings the 'viral' aspect into play and further improves your traffic.

One more point before I get into the examples, whatever you are asking your visitors to download, it must be perceived as 'Safe'. You'll need to guarantee that there is no spyware, adware or viruses in it.

  Promotional Tool Ideas

Screen Savers
  These are good for many different types of websites. With some images and a program you can create something that ties into your theme in an afternoon. Just be careful about using images that are copyrighted.

Give one of these programs a try:
PictureRiver Screensaver Software - Create a slideshow screensaver with over 40 stunning special effects. (Free to try, $19.95 to buy)
Slideshow V2.3 Freeware - Another good slideshow screensaver builder, has a little less functionality than the PictureRiver program above, but much less expensive.

Wallpapers
  Like screensavers, you could make a bunch in an afternoon. Use any good image editor, some non-copywrited photos, add some famous quotes or inspirational sayings and save them in two or three common screen sizes and you'll have a decent promo tool.

If you have Flash and feel real creative, you could try the Flash2X Wallpaper Maker and convert SWF files into Flash wallpapers, comes with an EXE Packager for distribution. (Free to try, $19.95 to buy)

Toolbars
  Particularly effective for shopping or entertainment websites, these 'Browser Helper Objects' can bring in a lot of repeat business.

If a branded toolbar is right for you, try one of these:
Aguta Toolbar Expert. Build your toolbar the way you want it, with a search field and drop-down menus. (Free to try, $19.95 to buy)
Conduit Toolbar Builder - Not a program, your toolbar is built and hosted on their website. The benefit is that when you make a change it automatically updates all toolbars already in use. The drawback is that you don't have full control of content.

Anything Printable
  If you have a desktop publisher program, you can create a lot of different printable items that tie in with your website theme... printable charts, checklists, calendar pages, mini-posters, etc.

You can easily match your website colors and add logos & URLs... the main thing is to make something that will be used by your visitors so that they see your branding every time they use it.

Calendar Programs
  This kind of custom promo software is not cheap, but for some it's well worth it.

For a feature-rich, totally customized calendar/personal planner like the one on this page contact Ken Mitnick at Down To Earth Software Inc. - prices for their DATEwise eCalendar start at $299... but considering the features and the sheer everyday usefullness of the end product, (and the fact that it never goes out of date) anyone who downloads your branded calendar will be using it for years... which makes the price very reasonable.

Journals or diaries and/or any other rebrandable software
  If the calendar programs are too pricey for now, you might be interested in some 'smaller' programs that are also rebrandable.

ReBrandIt.com has dozens of different programs you can get re-branded. At only $19.95 each, these guys may have just the thing for your website.
Programs4Less.com has only four rebrandable programs so far, (at #29.95 each) but the developer has promised more to come.

E-Books
  I'm including e-books here because if they're done right they can be really powerful as a promotional tool. The problem is that there are so many crappy ones available that many people won't bother downloading them.

To make this work for you, yours must be of very high quality and very closely tied to your website theme. In other words, stick with what you know in writing it and use a good program to compile it.

I use and recommend Activ E-Book Compiler, if you're interested in checking it out you can get a free evaluation version to give it a test drive.

Custom RSS Readers
  If you publish a RSS feed, getting your visitors to read it on a customized reader is a great idea.

After looking around, I'd say that the Tristana Brandable RSS Reader is probably your best bet. You can get it custom-branded and preloaded with your own content feeds.

Any or all of these things can give you an advantage over your competition. Just remember these things while you are deciding what to offer:
* Your promo should be as unique as possible
* It should have as much value as you can afford
* It should be closely tied to your website theme
* It should be something that people will be willing to share with their friends
* It should be something that they will use as often as possible
* Always get their email address in exchange!

None of these things are going to change your traffic numbers or sales overnight. But with one or more good promo items, some time and effort, you will see a dramatic change for the better.

To Your Success!
Tim

By Tim Brown © 2006. About the author: Tim is the webmaster at http://BLT-Web.com, where webmasters can find free tools, advice, tips and other useful resources designed to help them build a successful website.

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