8 Steps to Organizing a Promotional Sunglasses Giveaway to Boost Your Brand

Buyers are 2.5 times more likely to have a positive attitude toward promotional products when compared to internet advertising. If you're trying to decide between running a promotional product giveaway or an Internet advertising campaign, consider the statistic above. When done right, a promotional product giveaway can help build your social media following and improve your brand. Have you thought about a promotional sunglasses giveaway? Sunglasses are versatile, can be used all year long as long as the sun is out, and are a fun way to promote your company. Not sure where to start? Check out this article for the ultimate guide to organizing a promotional sunglasses giveaway.

How Giving Away Promotional Items Helps Your Business

In our digital era, do physical promotional items hold any value? When marketers want to promote a company, they usually turn to pay per click campaigns or some other form of online advertising. These days, promotional products are a way for your company to stand out and offer something novel to customers. We live in a world of instant gratification. We get annoyed when someone doesn't reply to a text or email right away. By giving away freebies, especially at an event, you're offering instant gratification to your clients. They can put on your sunglasses right away. Promotional products offer repeated impressions of your brand name. With an online advertisement, a consumer may see your ad once. They may click on it, or they might just ignore it and continue their online search. A promotional item offers thousands of impressions. For example, a single tote bag can garner more than 1,940 impressions at the cost of only 1/10 of a penny per impression. A hat can net your brand more than 3,380 impressions at only 1/4 of a penny per impression, and a pen averages 2,436 impressions at only 1/10 of a penny cost per impression. What's more, in the U.S., nearly 63 percent of people with promotional products end up giving the item to someone else. Only 20 percent throw it in the trash and 17 percent put the item away for safekeeping. This means additional exposure for your brand.

Why Choose Promotional Sunglasses?

When you look at the top promotional items, such as t-shirts, pens, and tote bags, you can see that they have one major thing in common: the most popular items are useful. They are simple, everyday items that consumers use again and again. In fact, nearly 77 percent of consumers said they kept a promotional product because of its usefulness. Nearly 29 percent kept an item because of its attractiveness. You could choose popular products for your giveaway, such as a pen or t-shirt, or you could pick a unique item like sunglasses. Sunglasses are both useful and attractive. They protect your eyes from the sun and add style to your wardrobe.

Different Types of Promotional Sunglasses

The fun thing about sunglasses is that they come in many different styles to suit anyone. Whether your customers are younger, older, male, or female, chances are, they will use these accessories. Here are just a few types of popular promotional sunglasses to choose from.

Malibu

One of the most popular models of sunglasses today. This model comes in all types of funky and fun colors. If your customer base is a younger demographic, this model is a great choice that you can easily customize.

Aviator

This classic model has a unique thin frame design with dark lenses. It might be more popular with an older demographic.

Casual or Novelty

For the young at heart, there are novelty sunglasses that you can customize with your brand name. You can get sunglasses with tinted lenses or with rubber frames.

Steps to Organizing a Promotional Sunglasses Giveaway

Ready to organize a promotional sunglasses giveaway? Here are eight steps to get it done.

1. Research and Choose Your Audience

Before you go out and purchase a bulk load of sunglasses, you want to do some research on your audience so that you pick the right product. If your target audience consists of men ages 50 and up, they probably won't want to wear sunglasses with tinted lenses. To find your target audience, look at your current customers. Consider demographics, such as age and gender. The last thing you want is to give away sunglasses and have people throw them away. You want to choose a style that appeals to your customer base. Your audience demographic will matter for your promotional product choice and your marketing efforts as well. Different social media channels have a different demographic base. Seniors are probably not on Snapchat as much as they are on Facebook.

2. Choose Your Promotional Product

Now that you've focused your audience, choose a type of promotional sunglasses. There are all types of styles and colors. A younger audience might enjoy wearing Malibu style in neon colors. An older audience might appreciate a custom box to keep their sunglasses in.

3. Choose Your Giveaway Channel

Now you have to figure out the details of your giveaway, how will you give away the sunglasses? Where will you hand them out? These are a few things to consider.

In-Store

If you have a traditional brick and mortar store, you can have the sunglasses giveaway at your store. This can be a way to bring new and existing customers to your store to shop. Your sunglasses can be a part of a giveaway if customers spend a certain amount. Or, you can hand them out with any purchase no matter the amount. You can even give them away with no purchase necessary.

Online Store

If you have an online store, you can give away sunglasses with everyone's order. You can include promotional sunglasses with any order amount or set a minimum dollar amount. You can also have a promo code that users have to enter so they can have the glasses added to their order.

At a Conference, Trade Show, or Event

If you have a big event like a trade show coming up, you can give away sunglasses at your booth. Arrange colorful sunglasses at your table to attract the attention of participants. You can also encourage people to sign up for your newsletter to get a pair of sunglasses. What's more, if the event is outside on a sunny day, visitors will be walking around with your sunglasses on as an additional form of brand marketing.

4. Announce the Giveaway

Once you have all the details in place, it's time to announce the giveaway. Before you do it, make sure you set all the rules and deadlines. For example, if the giveaway is in-store, you may set the times between 2 pm and 5 pm where you'll be giving away the sunglasses.

Choose a Marketing Platform

There are many different ways to market and promote your giveaway. There's social media, email newsletters, advertisements, and flyers in your store. The most popular social media platform is Facebook. Nearly 68 percent of U.S. adults are on this online platform. What's more, Facebook's user base is widely represented. YouTube is another incredibly popular platform to leverage. About 73 percent of the U.S. adult popular watches videos on YouTube. If you don't already, you should make a business page for your company on Facebook. Take some time to create a page, fill out the About sections, and add some quality photos. Set up a YouTube page for your business too. Depending on your customer base, you may want to leverage Snapchat and Instagram as well.

Post a Teaser

Before the giveaway, post a teaser of your upcoming promotion. You can get creative here. Post about the upcoming event you're having, whether it's a grand opening of a store or a conference, and tease a freebie for those who attend. You can post on your various social media channels. Make sure to tailor your post for each platform. For example, you need high-quality images for the aesthetic of Instagram. Snapchat has more of a fun, playful vibe.

Upload a Short Video

You can also upload a short video about your freebie sunglasses promotion. The video can talk about the event and offer a surprise freebie for visitors.

Email Newsletter

In addition to announcing the promotion on social media, you should send out an email newsletter to your customers. Make sure the newsletter is informative for your audience.

Tell Customers How They Can Sign Up

When you announce the giveaway, clearly state all the rules and details. If customers need to sign up to get the promo item, you can explain how they can sign up.

5. Market the Giveaway

Now it's time to market your promotional giveaway.

Create a Hashtag

Use relevant hashtags for your sunglasses promotion. This can be specific to the event you're having or the conference you'll be attending. If it's a conference, make sure you're using the correct hashtags for the event. You can also create a hashtag tailored to your event. This can be for your grand store opening or simply for your big sale or giveaway.

Post Regularly about It But Not Too Often

To market your promotion, you should post regularly. However, you don't want to fill up the news feed with all your posts. You can post about it once a day or once a week to remind those about your giveaway. If you're doing a countdown, such as a week before the giveaway, you can post a fun countdown leading up to the event.

6. Make Your Content Easy to Share

If you do post content about your sunglasses promotion, make sure it's easy to share. If it's an email newsletter, add buttons that allow users to easily share it with others. If you're posting blog posts, make your them easily shareable on social media. Also, add a call to action that allows users to like and follow your social media pages.

7. Give Away the Promotional Sunglasses

It's time for the main event — to give away your promotional sunglasses. When you hand them out, encourage people to post a picture wearing your sunglasses and use your custom hashtag or tag you in their pictures. Through this, you can create further brand awareness by reposting their pictures and bringing attention to your promotional giveaway. You can also keep the conversation going by asking users on your social media pages about the giveaway. You may send follow up surveys. Post a poll on Facebook and ask users what product would they like for you to give away next.

8. Measure the Data

After the giveaway, you should measure the data. You can do this in a variety of ways. If it was an in-store giveaway, you can compare your sales amount that day compared to other days. If you have an online store, you can look at the traffic received that day. You can also see how many coupon codes were used to receive the sunglasses. On social media, if you encouraged people to post pictures of themselves and tag you, you can see how many users tagged you or used your hashtag. You can also see the number of mentions received during the promotion.

Final Advice for Your Giveaway: Keep the Momentum Going

Once you have the promotional sunglasses giveaway, you should keep the momentum going. Your next step could be to announce your next giveaway with other products. From there, you can continue marketing your brand and your giveaway. You can do something different, such as hosting a contest Promotional products are a creative, fun way to grab the attention of customers and drive traffic to your website or store. Want to learn more about how promotional items can boost your business? Contact us to learn more.