Ultimate Guide to Choosing the right custom products for your business

Custom products can play an important role for the growth of small businesses. Custom made products that sport your branding can bring many benefits that can boost your brand trust and customer loyalty. From employee recognition and celebrating milestones and achievements and much more, customized products can boost morale and productivity. Custom products can also be used to make a more memorable impact at tradeshows and events so you can attract potential new clients and business partners to your booth. You can even use it to nurture existing relationships through corporate gifting and enhance customer satisfaction so you can get more word-of-mouth referrals.

As you continue exploring this post, you will have a better understanding of how including these products to your overall business strategy will benefit your business. You will also discover how to choose the right custom products to support your business objectives.

Understanding Your Brand & Target Audience

The first step to take when designing custom products for your business would be to have a thorough understanding of your brand and target audience. Your target audience is a “defined segment of the overall population that shares common characteristics, demographics, interests, or needs.” When creating the new products, you must keep in mind the occasion, and the preferences of the audience(s) whom your are trying to capture their attention. It is vital that you match the products to the audience’s demographics and interests. Are you trying to create Impression Tshirts that pop in the crowd or are you trying to capture the attention of clients when they walk into your office through employees sporting branded apparel? Regardless of whether you are launching your own fashion brand through custom products or need giveaway items, it is important to keep your audience in mind.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing Custom Products

When selecting custom products for your business you must keep in mind. Business owners and decision makers should carefully do a cost/ benefit analysis into things like quality, personalization options, turnaround times, budgets and more to ensure that you represent your brand in the best way and achieve your business objectives more effectively. Let’s take a closer look at some of them:

Quality of Materials: Using high quality materials will improve the durability and appearance of your customized product. Typically, the higher the quality, the higher the cost.
Customization Options: A reputable print shop will provide you with a range of customisation options including, print techniques, colour choices and size options.
Design Assistance: Consider working with a print partner that offers design assistance, services or have partnered up with a designer that can professionally help you boost brand perceptions and capture the attention of your users.
Turnaround time: Time means money. Check print turn around times and check whether your deadlines can be met.
Budget/ Costs be sure of the quality of materials you need, some cheaper options may bleed more than others or might not be able to make certain details pop. Check with your print shop to make sure that you don’t skimp out on print quality!
Customer Service: Customer satisfaction should be top of mind for any print shop you choose to go with. You want them to be responsive and properly address. Great customer support can make the entire process much less of a headache.
Reputation/ Reviews/ Testimonials: Always check for reviews and testimonials. Look at their reputation and see what others have said about their experience. Past clients can shed lots of light into the quality of products, reliability and overall custom experience.
Relevance to your marketing objectives: You will also need to confirm whether a specific item, colour, material can effectively represent your brand or support your marketing objectives.

Types of Custom Products & Their Uses

Once your target audience has been defined and you have carefully considered all of the key factors you need to think about, its time to think about the type of custom products you would like and where they may be used to get your message noticed.

Type of Custom Products:

Apparel: Tshirts, sweaters, polos, hats and more
Drinkware: Custom mugs, bottles and more
Promo items : golf balls, pens, hockey pucks, baseballs, tote bags
Stickers: UV DTF Stickers and vinyl sticker
Large Format Printing: Signs & banners
Digital Printing: Business cards, bookmarks, flyers, photo prints, posters and more.

Use cases:

Tradeshows: A great way to boost brand visibility, engagement and memorability.
Employee Recognition: A perfect way to show appreciation and boost morale of your team.
Corporate Gifting: Nurture your relationships with clients through corporate gifting to boost relationships, send vibes of professionalism and get more brand exposure.
Customer Appreciation: Boost customer loyalty and express customer appreciation through custom products such as stickers and drinkware. Custom appreciation products help build an emotional connection with your clients.
New Hire: It can be intimidating to join a new company with new cultures , beliefs and values. Custom products are an excellent way to level up your onboarding experience, feel more welcomed and more motivated as they will feel more included right from the start of their role.

Tips for Effective Custom Product Selection

Know your audience: Understand your audience so that you can tailor the products to their needs, tastes and wants.
Know Your Budget: Have a clear budget in mind. Don’t cut corners and invest in good quality items.
Isolate your Favourite Items: compare your top products and consider pros and cons
Research current events and trends: stay updated on the latest trends and news so you can better influence your audience.
Get Feedback: The input from your team or audience matters. Their insights can help you make more of an impact on future swag ideas.

Create Custom Products & Boost Business Outcomes with Printwell

Selecting the right custom products can greatly enhance your marketing efforts and boost your ROI. Ready to take your branding to the next level?

Reach out to us today for expert advice and a wide range of high-quality