Marketing: Drawing Attention To Yourself

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We live in an online world that’s vastly different than it was just a few years ago. Social media allows us to experience so much. The streams of our networks flow past us and rain information and links upon us so fast that we can’t keep up.

On the one hand, this means we a have greater ability to get our messages (and links) in front of people but on the other hand, it means our messages and links are quickly lost in the stream and are just as quickly and easily forgotten.

It’s always been important to stand out if you want to have your message heard, but it’s even more vital now than ever before. So what can we do in this “new age” of social media to stand out from the crowd?

I think we need to combine a bit of our new online tech with a bit of old offline marketing to make an impression. Let me tell you a little story to illustrate.

The last conference I attended was large and tech-oriented. The vendor showroom was huge and packed with both vendors and attendees. Of course, as is always the case, each vendor had some sort of promotional product that they were giving away for free – hoping to make a lasting impression. Promo products have been used for years as a way to stand out from the crowd, and keep a company and its products within a prospect’s memory far into the future. I imagine the promotional products business will be secure for a long, long time, as this kind of item will always be a popular way of keeping a brand in front of customers long after the customer disappear’s from the brand’s office or venue booth.

Anyway, back to my story. There I was, in a swarm of people, wondering which booth I should check out next. As I walked by one vendor’s booth, I saw these little shrinkwrapped “things” shaped like tiny computers, all lined up on the booth’s countertop. Curiosity got me. I touched one of the little things (which was about the size of my hand). It felt soft and squishy inside, but I still didn’t know what it was. Even though the booth rep was speaking with someone else, my curiosity was peaked enough to keep me waiting until I could get the rep’s attention.

That ability to hold my attention for a few minutes while a stream of activity was all around me is equivalent to being able to hold someone’s attention online today.

Eventually, the rep focused on me and I was able to ask what the little doodads were. He told me they were t-shirts. I was flabbergasted. How could a shirt fit inside that little squishy computer-shaped shrink-wrapped package? Well, the fact is they do, once all the air is squished out, and when he told me I could have one for free, I was ecstatic.

Now don’t go making fun of me for getting excited about such a goofy thing. Swag is loved by conference attendees everywhere, and the better the swag, the happier the attendee. In my mind, a t-shirt is the best swag ever, and to get one bundled in a little compressed, shaped format is just extra-special. Yeah, I know how silly that sounds, but hey, it’s not just me. Those little t-shirt gizmos were the hit of that conference, and I’ll never forget that particular company booth.

Want to have your website stand out in the crowd? Use the same technique to make a lasting impression as the online stream washes over your network. Use an old form of marketing such as free promo products, shrink-wrap it into a cool memorable shape, and then give them to key people within your online network.

If you are about to launch a new site, or want to hype your site’s latest feature, the first thing you’re going to do is let your network know about it. You’ll tweet it. You’ll set up a Facebook page for it. You’ll do all the smart social media things you’ve been advised to do. But I think you should take the extra step of giving out some promo items to the people whose attention matters the most. Those people may not actually be the A-list bloggers in your network. A-listers get inundated with swag all the time, so you sending them a cool tee probably won’t impress them much. But if you send those same tees to the B-list bloggers in your network, you’ll be remembered. And talked about. And linked to. (Probably).

Ok, so where do you get such things? One company that makes these little shrink-wrapped items is TeeCompressed.com. You can get a sample compressed t-shirt sent to you if you want to see one for yourself before investing in this kind of promotion. In the meantime, I’ve taken some photos of the sample I got from them, so you can at least get an idea of what they are like.

As you can see, this sample tee is compressed into the shape of a guitar (which is one of many different stock shapes you can choose from). It’s a 100% cotton shirt, screen printed with your logo/design, and then shrink-wrapped with a paper insert on top and bottom (again with your design).

That’s what the tee looks like once it’s decompressed. It’s more wrinkled than a shar-pei puppy, but that’s ok. Just wash the shirt, and the wrinkles all come out.

Now obviously, as with any promo product order, there’s a minimum number you have to purchase (144 in this case). So, unless you’ve got a big budget, you aren’t going to be using this method to stand out on a regular basis. You’ll want to reserve this kind of promotion for those times when it’s really, really important to make a big splash in the social media stream. But when it matters most, the last thing you want to do is get lost in the social stream.

That’s when it’s time to go back to some old-school marketing. Compressed tees just might be what will make your site stand out in the flowing stream.

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Tags: promotional product, social media


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