Typically, when it comes to USB flash drives, companies imprint or engraves them for promotional purposes, to endorse their business and increase their customers’ awareness or loyalty or even both. Also more and more companies use the preloaded digital data services as it is a convenient and cost friendly method to present their new products, services, prices or other promotional materials. This method of promoting is not new, but it still grows in popularity, as millions of branded USB flash drives are used as giveaways every year. Also, memory drives have become the default way to store, save or carry digital data for most of the market segments, from education or work to the regular home use. But all this popularity has a cost. It creates new opportunities, but it also creates new challenges.
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| English: Transcend USB flash drive (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
USB drives as promotional products
When a company uses the branded USB flash drive as a promotional product it must make sure that its item is not just another memory drive from many others. It has to make sure that its promotional giveaway is remarkable, is attractive and it is uses as intended. Otherwise, the whole marketing campaign is wasted. But there are a few ways though which you can ensure that will not happen. First, make sure that the custom designed USB flash drive is reflecting your brand or the product that is promoted. So give the memory drive a proper shape like a car, a fruit, a heater or you can even put bar codes on USB flash drives. Then, select a colour or a colour palette that matches the shape of the promotional giveaway item. This will make you branded USB flash drive to be attractive and stand out from the crowd. Another point to take into consideration is the memory capacity. A lot of storage space will make your USB flash drive be more used unlike the smaller ones.
Popularity of the branded USB flash drives
As stated before, the popularity of the branded USB flash drives also creates many and different opportunities. Among them, I can state a few interesting ones. For example, a new music band makes its debut. The branded USB flash drives can be preloaded with the band’s biography, videos, tour dates and even some of their songs. Or, to celebrate the birth of a child, you can load the flash drive with 3D or 4D baby scans and offer them to the parents or other family members. The opportunities are countless.
Engraving serial numbers or bar codes on USB flash drives
But one the most interesting approaches in promoting and marketing, at least for me, is to imprint or engrave serial numbers or bar codes on USB flash drives. An organisation can use bar codes on USB flash drives to identify an employee or to locate them in a big corporate building and even see on what department he or she is assigned. This can be done with a regular bar code scanner or through other means. Or a company can distribute certain software upgrades or other promotional software by verifying on their website the serial number imprinted or engraved on the promotional USB stick.
These are just a few examples of the many creative ways the branded USB flash drive can be used by corporates, medium or small businesses and even end users to promote and celebrate or even commemorate certain events.
Citations:
Eric, the author of this article works with USB Company in UK that manufactures branded usb sticks and other accessories. Eric likes to blog about technology and write reviews for the lates gadgets on the market. You can find his social media contribution here.
