Promotional items, intended to present a company's logo to potential customers or current clients in a useful or novel fashion, are one of the largest growing sectors that marketing budgets are being dedicated to since 2000. While some critics argue that promotional items are a waste of precious marketing dollar, due to there often cheap quality and worthless nature, others will tell you spectacular success stories about how their custom branded water spraying fan had people lining up for miles to get one at a tanning convention in Las Vegas. With tech companies attempting to make the most of their own marketing budgets, how is it possible to decide between the myriad custom branded promo products that are offered on and off the web?

While many tech companies at the next big convention or tradeshow will be scorned for giving away pens that bleed or useless keychains, your company could attract the attention of new clients by offering a promotional item that not only fits with your company's image, but also serves a purpose for the recipient.

- Stay away from items that have nothing to do with your brand or that detract from the purpose your company serves. Nobody wants a slinky from a computer chip manufacturer.

- Aim to present your promotional items as an extension of your brand, attempting to enhance company image. Tech companies should be going after cutting-edge custom logo items.

- Try colors commonly associated with technology and the digital age for your custom promo products. Metallic silvers, lustrous blues, and hues of white seem to work well.

- Cheap plastic is out. Make sure anything you want to brand with your logo for giveaways at tradeshows is high-quality and durable. Spend a little extra in order to get the quality and results you want from distributing these items.
Promotional marketing, like all marketing activities, involves careful planning, smooth execution, and proper evaluation. In order to make the best use of your marketing budget, one must consider several factors before ordering promotional products. When it comes to the technology industry, many companies opt to choose edgier, more appropriate promo items to brand with their company logo.

In the last piece, we gave some suggestions about general tips when choosing the right giveaways for tradeshows, conferences, or guerrilla marketing efforts. Here, we will talk about four specific promo products that will give your tech company an advantage over the competition when customers are handed the branded baubles.

If something is worth placing a custom branded logo on it, you need to make sure the tradeshow giveaway is both useful and of quality construction. Because useful promo products often become permanent fixtures in a potential client's office or home, the potential long-term branding saturation is immense. Here are a few great products that can be branded, color-customized, and ordered cheaply in bulk, all while providing the added benefit of usefulness to the consumer.

    USB Flash Drives - Perhaps the king of tech-based tradeshow promotional items, these handy objects of longevity, utility, and a highly customizable branding platform for all of your promotional needs. They come in thousands of different styles, are small enough to be carried anywhere, and allow you to pre-load them with custom content the receiver can access when they boot up the USB thumb drive.

    MP3/ MP4 Players - With the prices of microchips falling by the day, these promo giveaways are cheap when bought in bulk and can be printed on in many places to offer brand exposure. Add to this the fact that they can be pre-loaded with media files, and you have another great tool for pushing company initiatives to potential clients.

    Bluetooth Headsets - As the day looms closer when holding cell phone conversations on a handset while driving will become illegal across the nation, look for these items to come into increasing demand. Brand these with a company logo, give them out at your next tradeshow promotional event, and enjoy the satisfaction of providing a useful promo product that is improving public safety.