Thanks for the post Linda Thompson
One of the things that I enjoy doing is going to trade shows and meetings where participants hand out practical freebie promotional products. I love the can cozies and the tote bags, the sewing kits and the lottery ticket scratchers and bottle openers.
I belong to a business networking group and we have been meeting for the past four years every Wednesday morning at a local restaurant. We take turns presenting a ten minute sales pitch about ourselves and our businesses. Sometimes the presenter passes out promotional products that their company buys. I really like it when they pass out something useful, like a pen or a notepad. Not so much the neon sunglasses that the eye doctor passed out last month!
One of the things that I’ve been considering doing is asking some of the smaller entrepreneurs in the group is if they want to get together to design a bag that was made in the USA that advertises all of us. That way we could split the cost but still have some freebies we could pass out to our prospective/existing clients. And I really like the idea of supporting companies that manufacture items made in the USA!
I can remember one year that my hubby and I bought five hundred personalized pens with his business name on them. We handed them out to our customers, mailed them out inside Christmas cards, gave a lot to our kids to take to college with them, passed them out at the networking meetings. Everyone loved getting them!

