Are you sitting at your desk, scratching your head and wondering why you just spent a gazillion dollars on a marketing promotion that brought you exactly zero return on your investment? Do you still have boxes and boxes of those pens you thought would have your phone ringing off the hook, sitting in your storage room or warehouse, lonely because no one wants to take them home?

Don’t freak out. There may not be a lot you can do about past promotional products that ended up losing or even costing you money, but you can guarantee that you never again lose money on promotional items that fail miserably.

How? Well, see, it’s all the idea behind the promotional item. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking if they stick their logo on a cheap or even very nice pen or magnet, their bottom lines will instantly rise.

It takes more than that for promotional items to work. It takes some thought and planning on your part for them to stand a fighting chance in this extremely cluttered marketing and advertising arena. Yep, it takes knowing two things:

1) What message do you want the promotional item to convey, and

2) What action do you want the customer to take.

Unless you know these two things and work them clearly into your promotional items, even the cleverest promotional product will fail. People may get a nice pen or refrigerator magnet, or even something unique, from you, but unless it has a message and spurs your clients to take action of some kind, the pen will get stuck in a drawer or lost, and the magnet will get stuck on the refrigerator and forgotten until it’s needed to stick up a grocery list.

Pens and magnets are great for branding your company, but they rarely make anyone want to use a company’s services. At best, in an emergency, because your number just happens to be on their desk or refrigerator, you’ll get a call-and a sale.

That’s because other than presenting your logo, name, address and phone number, they don’t have a clear message.

The promotional item may even say you’re the best widget maker in the India, but so do a zillion other pens and magnets and notepads out there. But they don’t give anyone a reason to use your company’s product or service. And even your promotional ideas have to connect to your customers’ needs for them to take action of any kind. People need a reason or benefit to make them take action.

So get your message and call to action clear in your mind, then choose a promotional item that gets those two things across to your customers-and you’ll have promotional items that are hands-down winners every time.