Recognition is Key - How to Reward Your Top Performers

The New Year has begun, but with its beginning came the close of 2011 - a year filled with accomplishments and perhaps a few regrets.  As B.F. Skinner recognized in his behavioral conditioning theories, if we are to perpetuate good things for this year and forever in the future, we must reward those behaviors we want to see continue indefinitely.  This comes in handy for team leaders and department managers across all industries - if we want our team members to continue their accomplishments, we must recognize their accomplishments if are to see them repeat those accomplishments and reach even greater goals.

A simple, yet effective way of recognizing these achievements is with custom awards, trophies, or plaques.  No good deed should go disregarded if we truly appreciate our team members' contributions to our success as a work group.  By recognizing the team member who has played the strongest role, met the highest goals, or other measurable achievements, we support the original mission our organization proclaims to uphold.  Without recognition, a mission statement or goal that has been has no real value.

Team awards are often needed for group-oriented projects so the synergy of the team is recognized as more valuable than one person's contributions.  However an effective way to give kudos to a particular team member who went beyond the rest of the group for the greater good is by providing a personalized award for that member, while providing the entire team with a common award.

Choosing custom awards can be daunting with the thousands of options available, but often there are awards whose designs will stand out as being more original than the rest of the styles.  For example, a glass light bulb sculpture could recognize an electrical engineering team member's work, or a fiery red glowing orb could honor an up-and-coming clothing designer with bold taste.  Creativity is the key to selecting the perfect award or trophy.  Many designs can be customized, as they are available in single quantity orders.

Start designing your own award, or choose from thousands of stock trophies and plaques that can be customized with engraving or name plates.  Reward your team members who stretch beyond their boundaries with custom awards.  Truly, there's no limit to what the imagination can design.       

Bronze Awards

Crystal Awards   

Marble Plaques

Custom Plaques

Custom Key Chains for Promotions on the Go

Another home-run promotional product!  The customized key chain, available in a variety of materials, exposes your brand or your organization in front of your target audience hundreds of times (if not thousands of times) per year.  For any purpose, for any audience, for any brand, a custom printed key chain exists.  We're talking about the ubiquitous plastic key chains in a variety of shapes (cars, guitars, flamingos, dragons, etc) to the less-often-found Rubik's cube on a key chain.  Whatever your fancy, a key chain exists somewhere to fulfill the purpose of your promotion.  

    For the utilitarian driver, there are functional key chains that provide a bottle opener, handy screwdriver tip, knife blade, or any other tool found useful in a pinch.  It's amazing the number of tools that can fit together in one small key chain!  For navigating darker parking lots, sidewalks, or hallways, there are bright LED flashlight key chains providing over 20,000 hours of light!  Some even come with wind-up handles to re-charge without batteries.  For the functional gift, a key chain with tools attached is the ideal promotion that keeps your company's logo in your customers' minds for many years of use.  

    Let's venture over into the right brain area now...  Function aside, there are thousands of key chains that simply look beautiful, whimsical, funky, and any other adjective that says fun!  (At least if you choose a "pink flamingo key chain", it has more function than a lawn ornament does.)  From colorful rock guitar shaped key chains to miniature Eiffel Tower key chains, the shapes already available in stock for your imprint are endless.  Besides all the stock shapes available, many key chain materials such as plastic, metal, wood, and acrylic can be custom shaped.  This option for a key chain in a custom shape allows your promotional ideas to be more targeted to your audience, whether that group is specifically new customers, prospective customers, volunteers for your organization, donors, or any other individuals important to your organization's success. 

     How do you choose a promotional key chain from the thousands of options available?  First identify your audience.  Who will be receiving the key chains?  If you're a retail store, what are your customers most interested in?  Next identify the purpose of your new custom key chains.  If you're a retailer, are the key chains to become an impulse purchase next to the cash register?  If you're part of a non-profit organization, are you giving the key chains out to volunteers and donors as a thank you gift for their support?  If you belong to a for-profit corporation, is it to build brand loyalty or gain new customers by giving the key chains out as part of a promotional marketing campaign?   First know the purpose of creating your custom key chains and what group will be receiving them.  Then search for custom promotional key chains that fit your target group best. 

     Best of all, if you don't really know what types of key rings would be best suited for your purpose, plenty of professional advice is available from an experienced marketing company, Keystone Specialties.  Each customized key chain shown in the product selection has a convenient Request More Info button for help.  Tell us your organization's name, the purpose of using promotional custom key chains, and even upload any images you have available for us to review before recommending the best key rings to fit your purpose. 

     Let's work together to create dynamite promotional products, even if they are bright pink, have two spindly legs and a beak. 

Sample Promotional Key Chains:

Item # GNDBJ-DLKTK

Item # VHBDG-HMLEV

Item # BOFDK-EOYTX

Item # GHEAG-GWNMH

Healthcare Promotions for a Competitive Market

    Let's be honest about everything: Healthcare has been a hot topic over the last 2 years in the political arena, and will be for sometime now until all the "bugs" in the industry are worked out.  If you're a professional in healthcare services, you're undoubtedly feeling crushed at times between your practice demands, patient demands, and government regulations.  With so many needs to handle every day, promotional marketing for your healthcare practice may be suffering.  In that case, you're setting the future of your practice up for a costly decline in revenues.

    Here's the reality: Promotional healthcare products reaches people more effectively than any advertising media, and for less cost per impression than advertising on TV, Internet banner ads, radio spots, or print ads.  The cost per impression of a promotional item averages out to be about half a cent per impression over its number of uses.  Other advertising media mentioned above can cost up to $10 per impression!  The cost savings for effective marketing campaigns to build clientele in the healthcare industry points back to promotional items.

      So what kind of advertising products can build business for a doctor's office, medical center, dental office, or any other healthcare practice?  Here are some top ideas:

 Hand Sanitizers

Custom Spray Hand Sanitizer

    Alcohol-free hand sanitizers and sanitizing lotions are available to give out to your patients as a thank you for their visit, or even to send out with a direct mail campaign to prospective patients within your region.  Hand sanitizers are used daily by millions of people, so why not have your logo & contact information printed on the label?  Send them out in a direct mail package to prospective customers to let them know you're a preferred provider for their healthcare needs.

Custom Pill Cases

     When you have 1 pill a day to take, it's easy to remember.  When you have more than that in your schedule, it can be challenging to never miss a pill on any given day.  What promotional product comes to the rescue?  Custom printed pill cases!  Promotional pill cases can divide daily pills into easy-to-follow slots labeled Sunday through Saturday.  Printed pill boxes come printed with your logo normally located on the front face below the daily slot lids.  Here are a few styles available printed with a logo:

7 Day Pill Case - Item SMEBI-BUGCX

Rotating Pill Organizer - Item TNGAJ-ITRWW

Heart Pill Case - Item JJECE-BVOCZ

Custom Sticky Note Pads

Custom Sticky Notes - Doctors Scrubs Note Pad

     Post-it sticky note pads are cheap promotional items that can be given to office visitors or even sent in the mail as a promotional item.  They come printed with your practice information and logo on each note, giving your prospects and customers exposure to your doctors office or medical practice every day.

     There are hundreds of other medical and healthcare themed products to effectively advertise your doctors office, pharmacy, or medical center to patients in your region.  The first step to growing your market presence is to promote your business using any of the hundreds of advertising promotional products available for the healthcare industry.  The second is to provide the best service possible once your new patients arrive.

     Contact Keystone Specialties for additional promotions related to healthcare.  In challenging times, effective promotional products can improve your odds of success. 

Get Your Stress Gone!

     Economic failures, tsunamis, riots, tornadoes, wildfires, leaking oil wells.... What hasn't caused stress recently for everybody in the world over the last year?  It's time to GET RID of that unwanted baggage we call stress.  Out!  Kaput!  Vamoose!  In fact, it's time to help our friends, clients, co-workers, and everybody we come in contact with to DE-STRESS.  Ahhhhh........   Let it all go.  There now.  You're feeling better already, aren't you?

     When it comes to people making buying decisions (Hello, my fellow "Marketing People"!), did you know that people resist making buying decisions when they feel stressed?  According to the Science Daily in an article published last April, "In financial decision making, where rational and deliberative thinking is essential, a stressful environment might hamper our ability to make decisions".  See?  You want people to like your product and your organization forever?  Get them out of their stress fast, (and keep them out) and they'll be a client for life.

     All of us like to feel confident in our decision making skills.  It's what gives us independence and proves we have more processing capacity than an amoeba.  Stress makes us feel the opposite: high-strung, ineffective, mundane, crazy, etc, etc, etc.

     Here's a promotional product that connects with your customers in our troubled times (drum roll, please): The stress ball.  Aha!  The simple, non-technical, mindless stress ball.  Yes, that's it!  The one and only device that gets people to do mindless, repetitive things for minutes (or hours, if they're a bad case) at random times during the day!

     Here's the thing.  Not all stress balls are created equal.  I know, it's wrong to discriminate, but we're talking about stress balls here.  They don't have feelings, just spongy bodies WITHOUT nerve endings.  (Sorry, you can't be turned into a stress ball to get rid of your stressful feelings.  Isn't that a genius idea though?)

     Think creatively about the usual spherical ball of foam.  We're talking specific shapes like teeth (Dentists, listen up!  It's time to save the upholstered arms on your expensive dentist chairs from stressful clawing!), a heart (American Red Cross, give your donors a squeeze toy to help them "make a fist" before taking the needle), a computer (hi nerds and semi-nerd software engineers who are about to trash your computer at 3 AM when the program fails again), and even your favorite cartoon characters (Dilbert, anyone?)!

    It's all up to your imagination... so think of your business promotions' goal, and think of sending a little gift of love to all your stressed out customers.  They'll be sure to give you their business again, since every time they pick up the custom imprinted stress toy you gave them with your company's name on it, they'll get rid of a little more anxiety... squeeze by squeeze.   

Find a Custom Stress Reliever Toy for Your Next Promotion

Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Bags

If you have flown in the last 9 years, you have passed through one of those TSA checkpoints trying to get to your gate. That means take off: your shoes, belt, earrings, watches, jewelry, etc…and you have to unpack your laptop and put it in its own separate bin from your bag your carry it in. Walk through the x-ray, hope you don’t set it off and have to take something else off, walk back through and if your unlucky enough to set it off again…spread’em.

Item # ZLCVJ-HAVRS

After the nice officer is done with the pat down, you can go collect your stuff. But, other people have been passing through and your stuff is sitting at the end of the conveyor belt mixed with everyone else’s stuff. All of this hassle just to catch a plane, BUT it’s worth it to be safe.

Well, during this whole process a lot of items are left behind or lost. The TSA is partly responsible for these items, and some are not cheap. Jewelry, flash drives, and LAPTOP’S! Yes, as big as they are laptop’s get left behind. Imagine having to spend the time trying to track down all the owners of this lost property. Did you know that TSA also partners with the Naval Air Systems Command to help manage and process lost and unclaimed property? Well, the TSA has had enough and worked with a bag company to come up with a solution for this problem with laptops.

Item # ZLCVJ-HAVRS

Introducing the Checkpoint Fast Pass Backpack, distributed by Keystone Specialties. This backpack is TSA approved and now you don’t have to remove your laptop from you bag anymore. Simply unzip the bag and lay it flat on the conveyor belt so the laptop is exposed. Now, you don’t have to pack as much when you make it through the security checkpoint. Other available models include the boardroom computer briefcase and laptop slimline laptop brief.

Details about the bag and its pricing are available at www.keystonespecialties.com/promotional-products. Just search this item number (ZLCVJ-HAVRS) and learn how you can order yours. This is a great item for any business to give to their traveling salespeople or as a thank you gift to a valued client.

Imprinted Pens are Effective Advertising

Banner Pen Item# JMFXB-GXYQQ

What is the number one promotional product in the USA?  What promotional product is considered the most useful and longest kept by the person who receives it? That would be the PEN!  Based on a study by ASI (Advertising Specialty Institute), a pen is kept by 46% of its recipients, keeping your organization's name in front of them for the long term.

Why?  Because the pen is a useful item, and think about it, there never seems to be one around when you need one!  Recall the last time you used a great pen and thought to yourself, "I really like this pen, I should keep it!"  If you are going to giveaway pens, they should be nice enough that the person using the pen wants to keep it. 

You don't have to spend $3.00 or more per pen, as there are many attractive and reliable pens available at low cost.  The more often your custom pens are used, the more likely the person using it will remember your organization.  From a recent ASI (Advertising Specialties Institute) study, on average a pen is used 18.2 times a month.  That means if you give out 1,000 pens, you gain 18,200 exposures to your brand or organization!  Advertising doesn't get any better than that. 

Click here to search for your custom pen

Burn This!

Item # BJADF-HAJLC

Do you burn CD’s or DVD’s with information for your client on them? Are the CD’s or DVD’s branded with your name or company name and logo? Why promote someone else’s brand (i.e. Sony, HP, etc) when you are trying to promote yours?
In your highly competitive market, your image is as important as the imaging you do. Your brand, your look, the face you put on your business, helps you build business and future growth.
We have available stock backgrounds that allow small order quantities. That means not having to tie up cash. Fast turnaround means quick replacement inventory. Our stock includes selections for the following industries:

• Radiology/Laboratory/Medical Facility
• Accountants/Tax Preparers/Financial Advisers
• Creative Arts/ Multimedia Production
• Medical Practices/ Health Clinics/ Health Services

Even if your industry isn't listed, we can still take your image or logo and burn it on the face of a CD or DVD. We will help you design We will help you design a personalized business dvd or cd!
We brand in only the highest resolution insuring that your disc reflects the highest corporate and professional image. Patented new technology bringing you the highest quality, lowest cost and fast service for even the smallest of needs.  Discs are decorated with a hard fire process making them scratch and fade resistant, 100% waterproof and the highest graphic resolution.
Creative packaging options finish your project from budget friendly mailers, to traditional plastic jewel cases with full color covers. For more great ideas, check us out at http://www.keystonespecialties.com