I have forever felt that marketing campaigns were widely applied but not very well considered. Promotional campaigns in a few ways is a basically good goal for a wide variety of things. You are able to give away pencils, hats, or other modest trinkets with your brand name on it. This is a means to spend little cash on an advertising campaign that will produce some amount of name recognition. The issue of how effectual these marketing merchandising promotions are is open-ended, though. If I open my pen cabinet, I will see hundreds of promotional pencils and pens in there, but I could not name a single brand name offhand. Unless you sell something such as stationary which folks associate with pencils, these type of merchandising giveaways are nothing but a waste of money.
In my humble opinion - and I always tell my customers this - niche marketing campaigns should only be done for unique purposes. Guerrilla marketing can work wonderfully depending on what sort of product you sell, but the niche marketing marketing must be carefully altered. Just going out into a public square and holding a contest or giving away a product will not generate any business for you at all. You have to think strategically.
One of my very favorite places to do niche marketing campaigns is at nightclubs and bars. When folks are drinking, they will do what they can to win whatever. Whether you are giving away shot glasses, snacks, drink mixers, or simply T-shirts, people will get excited about your merchandising promotion. If they get to come home with a keepsake of their night, they will forever connect it with the fun of going out drinking with friends. This is what rewarding merchandising campaigns attempt to do - create those types of positive associations around your product or brand name.
Hot summer time afternoons are also a great time for merchandising promotions. If you're willing to spend a few thousand bucks giving away free drinks in a crowded community place, people will absolutely love you. Even if you are giving out something that doesn't strictly go together with the weather - such as a salty snack - people will still be thankful as long as they get some water with it. If you can catch people at an unguarded minute, you can gain their brand loyalty before they even know what hit them. That is what lucrative merchandising promotions are all about. Leave the brand-name pens in the home!