Consider Making Promotional Gifts With 3D Printing for Marketing Project

The union of 3D printing and promotional products has always seems obvious to us, but the promotional product industry hasn’t seemed to take notice. We look at what this industry is lacking in terms of a full skill set that is holding it back.

Promotional Products are Big Business

For years, if you told people you were in the business of promotional products, they’d say, “we can’t spend our marketing budget handing out tchotchkes.” Tchotchke can be defined as “a small object that is decorative rather than strictly functional; a trinket.”

But for a moment, consider some facts:

• 8 in 10 consumers own between 1 and 10 promotional products
• 53% of these people use a promotional product at least once a week
• 6 in 10 of them keep promotional products for up to two years
• Only one in five people will trash an unwanted promotional product
• Before receiving a promotional product, 55% of people had done business with the advertiser. After receiving a promotional product, 85% of people did business with the advertiser
• The “cost per impression” of a writing instrument is one tenth of a cent
• 53% of the time, promotional products create a more favorable impression of the advertiser
• 48% of consumers would like to receive promotional products more often
• Consumers hang on to promotional products for an average of 6.6 months
• 89% of consumers can recall the advertiser of a promotional product they’d received in the last two years
• 91% percent of consumers have at least one promotional product in their kitchen, 74% have at least one in their workspace, 55% have at least one in their bedroom

Who buys promotional products? Top users include:

1. Education: Schools, Seminars
2. Financial: Banks, Savings & Loan Companies, Credit Unions, Stock Brokers
3. Healthcare: Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Clinics
4. Not-for-Profit Organizations
5. Construction: Building Trades, Building Supplies
6. Government: Public Offices, Agencies, Political Candidates
7. Trade, Professional Associations and Civic Clubs
8. Real Estate: Agents, Title Companies, Appraisers
9. Automotive: Manufacturers, Dealers, Parts Suppliers
10. Professional: Doctors, Lawyers, CPAs, Architects, etc.

In the US alone, it’s a $21 billion industry. Globally? Maybe $80 billion?

Simple Steps to Making Money with Promotional Gifts

If you want to sell promotional products to companies, here are some tips to help you work with a client:

• Sit down with a client, draw some ideas out on a piece of paper, and come back the next day with prototypes. You can work on any further changes as needed.
• If a customer only needs a hundred or so items for a conference, then there is no need to order in quantities usually associated with injection molding.
• Show them examples of 3D printed items before you place the order to ensure they are ok with the print quality. It’s not the same as injection molding.
• Consider using a service bureau like FacFox to save money on making prototypes and low-volume products.
• Have different material options for them to look at in person.
• Suggest designs that promote the product and services they want to highlight.
• Get ideas from a traditional product promotions catalog and get design inspirations.
• Ask where this promotional product will be shown. Take into consideration special environmental aspects that would affect material choice.
• Ask what promotional products they have made in the past and which worked out the best.
• Ask if they have a budget in mind and then try to offer designs that meet that goal.
• Offer to make low volume, special versions that would be considered a MUCH higher value, and that would be meant to give away to high-up decision makers at companies they are trying to win business from. This is an example of a 3D printed vase from potterygame.com that you could help create for a museum, or someone who really likes antiquities, for example.

Above all, it really comes down to how fast you can service your prospective clients, or really how quickly you can impress them with design options.

Beginners’ Guide for 3D Printing Promotional Gifts

To learn more about how our designers create very detailed 3D printed promotional products, here’s a simple step-by-step 3D printing process.

Before you print anything, you will need a 3D model. What you can do is:

• Create your 3D model using a professional 3D modelling software like SketchUp or Tinkercad which can be accessed online.
• Download your 3D model on websites like YouMagine or Cults, a platform where creators share their works with other fellow artists. There are a lot of free and paid 3D models on the web.

Also, you can turn to our designers for help with some drafts.

Once you’ve created your 3D model, it will be saved as an STL file. You will need to upload it in your printing software, Cura & Repetier – these are free to download online. You can then change the printing setting. Take note that the complexity of the design and printing settings may affect the printing time and the quality of the object.