The ASI Trade and Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida posted a record-breaking attendance of 6,110+ distributors, up 38% from last year. The creative and marketing team at Blacksonville Community Network had two goals in mind when we set out to attend this year’s largest merchandise convention in the United States. First, to leverage the power of relationships by meeting first hand the owners and managers of powerhouse merchandise providers such as National Gift Cards, PrintFuzz, Castle Shirt Company, Kanata Blankets and hundreds of other brand marketers. Our second goal was to learn all as much as possible about the various promotions, services and amenities available to quality distributors and marketers such as Blacksonville fortunate to attend the ASI Show.
With increasingly corporations indulging in non-traditional advertising and merchandise marketing, the global supply and demand for new products is booming more than ever with an awesome sense of competitiveness. This has led the vast majority of merchandise owners to resort to varied kinds of funky-fresh promotional tools; the most well-liked of these being hired guns who know their industry inside out. One way for this increasing number of start-up enterprise owners to survive is by obtaining a large database of professional, high profile marketers who are at the forefront of innovative merchandise solutions. As the Blacksonville team interviewed different vendors at the ASI Show, it became obvious to participants the value of hiring a social media firm to capture their unique products and merchandise services to gain a competitive online advantage.
Today’s keynote speaker was actor and activist Michael J. Fox who shared the remarkable life lessons he learned from his struggle with Parkinson’s disease – and the hard-won perspective that helped him to see challenges as opportunities. This phenomenal keynote left thousands inspired by Michael’s insights into how to become a happier, more satisfied person by recognizing the gifts of everyday life.
Another great value of merchandising for small businesses and corporations is the indirect impact left on stakeholders and consumers once they encounter your logo on something they like or love to use often. A quality piece of merchandise not only gives your brand feet, it enables your e-Commerce website to gain more authenticity and to be rank higher within the search results of many of the largest search engines such as Google and Yahoo. When you combine the proper tags, categories and meta descriptions to your new merchandise products, more search engine spiders are likely to find your website. The spillover is that you increase the chances of people looking for the precise keywords associated to your website, visiting your web site greater than other websites that are ranked lower than yours. With more individuals visiting your web site, the site visitors goes up naturally, leading to increase in new leads, and thereby gross sales and profit.
It is to be noted that merchandising isn’t the only methodology of increasing your brand and website ranking or traffic. There are several other methods to expand consumer awareness which would assist in development and growth of your business, however they’re extraordinarily time consuming and do not produce rapid results.
An investment in quality, relevant merchandise is the one methodology which helps in the assured promotion of your products, services, website and on-line enterprise over a short interval of time.
You might hire any merchandise service provider to research, acquire and deliver your branded products or even carry out the task of researching products yourself. Hiring the team at Blacksonville as a service supplier is at all times a preferred alternative over the latter, especially for high profile brands who have a lot to lose, and understand the true value of spending money on building and increasing their business prospects.
SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
Make a smart decision when you set our to market your business in 2011. Hire a knowledgeable branding and consulting firm to perform new customized merchandise items that will help your business and web site soar. Your investment will pay for itself ten times over, not to mention help you attain an excessive search engine rating which leads to effective improvement of online gross sales over the long run. Over the past ten years we have developed a fast system to get you a new merchandise estimate in little to no time. The service is carried out by knowledgeable professionals who have direct access to the manufacturers and the proper pricing data to thousands of quality products. They commit their time and expertise in researching for probably the most reliable sources and means for creating new business for your company. Nonetheless, make sure that the professionals performing the task of searching for your next pen, apparel, or designer item are properly briefed about your small business expectations so as to best equip them with target items which best work for your corporate image.
Apart from hiring a professional design and merchandising company or screen print expert, there are numerous different means of increasing brand popularity and new lead generation. Listed below are a couple of merchandising tips that are nothing but free choices accessible to business owners who don’t want to spend a lot on outsourcing this activity:
1. Build relationships with quality merchandise manufacturers, NOT just vendors or “middle men” acting as distributors.
2. Make a blog on the associated items you desire on your website. Make sure that you put up informative articles on the weblog about your merchandise needs and services.
3. Research Google shopping comparisons to match price for price.
Click here for full video coverage of ASI Show Orlando. Click here for pics from our portfolio.
And don’t forget to register today at www.asishow.com.
Please let us know if you are interested in new merchandise or creative design services by completing an Estimate form here. Allow 24-48 hours for each quote.