Promotional products are things that have your company name, logo, and often your contact information on them.  These items are often give away or sold at a nominal price to customers and potential customers.  Promotional products are great for marketing your business, especially for establishing brand name recognition for your company.

Here are three ideas on how you can use promotional products to market your business.

1. Give promotional pens away like candy.  People love free stuff, even if it’s something as disposable as pens.  In fact, I think many people especially love free pens — after all, who hasn’t had the experience of needing a pen and being unable to find one?  Take advantage of this by giving away pens with your company name, logo, and phone number or website URL.  You can give them away at conferences, trade shows, or even just pass them out to other local businesses to use at their cash registers.
2. Give coffee shops, cafes, and bookstores a supply of promotional bookmarks.  Independent stores like these tend to be happy to help other local businesses market themselves.  Promotional bookmarks work especially well at bookstores, where customers might start reading a book, decide to buy it, and need a way to mark their place.
3. Give your employees corporate gifts.  What seems like a show of generosity and appreciation to your employees will also benefit your business.  When you give your employees gifts that they can take with them and use, such as promotional bags and travel mugs, they are also broadcasting your company name to anyone who happens to see them.  Since their use of the item implies an endorsement of the company, the "advertisement" also gains the power of a word-of-mouth recommendation.

There are many more ways that you can use promotional products to promote your business, but hopefully these suggestions will help to get you started.