3 Marketing Tools To Carry In Your Pocket

Being prepared is key to business success. When marketing your business, you never quite know when a golden marketing opportunity may come up. With the right tools to hand, you can seize this opportunity. Fortunately, a pocket is all you need to carry these tools around with you.

In this blog post, we’ll explore three indispensable marketing tools you can easily carry in your pocket: business cards, branded pens and a smartphone. Each of these tools has its own unique applications and purposes. Let’s take a closer look at these tools and the various ways in which they can help you market your business on the go.

Business cards

The use of business cards dates back centuries. These cards are a great way to quickly exchange key information about your business in person. Such information could include:

• Your company name: So that people know what your company is called.
• Your name: To let people know who they are contacting if they decide to reach out. 
• Your phone number: If you want people to get hold of you by phone.
• Your email address: If you want people to get hold of you by email. 
• Your website address: Some business cards include a QR code, so that recipients don’t have to manually type out the web address. 
• Your physical address: This could be useful if you’re promoting a physical location that you want people to visit (such as a restaurant or shop). 

It’s easier to hand over a card than to try to get someone to memorise your details or type them into their phone. Whenever you meet someone who might be interested in your business - or who may be a useful connection - you can simply hand them a business card from your pocket.

Compared to other handouts like flyers and leaflets, business cards are much more compact. You can more easily carry around a wad of them in your pocket and a recipient can easily slip them into their wallet for safe keeping.

Business cards are most commonly handed out to people in person, but you can also strategically leave them in places. This could include leaving a few of them on a barber shop waiting room table or even slipping one into a carefully selected book in your local library.

There are printing services online that you can use to design a business card. You can then choose how many cards you want to order and get them printed and delivered to your address. 

Branded pen

It’s useful to always have a pen on you in case you need to sign something or take some notes. And yet many of us forget to carry around one.

Carrying around some branded pens in your pocket means that you’ve always got a pen - both to use yourself and to hand out to others who may need a pen. In fact, you can deliberately give away pens to people to provide a physical reminder of your brand. 

Just like a business card, a branded pen could contain information such as your company name, phone number and email address. Every time they use this pen, they’ll be reminded of your company. There are many situations where you may be able to hand these out or leave them in places for people to find:

• You could hand them out to attendees at a seminar or conference along with a notebook.
• You could hand them out to people at a trade show while encouraging people to sign up to your mailing list or sign up to a contest (you could hand them the pen and let them write their name and email address on a sheet of paper).
• You could leave pens in strategic places where people are likely to need a pen such as the post office or bank.
• During an initial meeting or consultation with a client, you could give them a pen to take away while signing any contracts.

Pens are just one of many promotional products you can give away. Other pocket-sized promotional products that could contain information like your logo and contact details could include branded sunglasses, branded USB sticks or branded keyrings. 

Smartphone

This is possibly the most versatile marketing tool of them all. Smartphones can allow you to carry out digital marketing from any location using a variety of apps. They are able to carry out an array of functions including sharing text, taking photographs, taking videos, sharing your geolocation and - of course - making phone calls. 

Today’s smartphones are pocket-sized computers capable of doing all the tasks you’d usually do at your desk and more. Some of the different ways you can use your smartphone to market your business are included below:

Social media marketing

Your smartphone can allow you to share social media posts on the go to your social media business accounts. This is useful for when you want to connect to other social media users in real time.

For example, social media marketing could be used to encourage people to come down to an event. You can share your location, share photographs or share videos. You can even take a live video. Hashtags can meanwhile be used to label your posts - some events like trade shows may have their own hashtags and using these could help you to reach out to attendees at the event searching for that hashtag. 

On top of sharing general posts, it’s also possible to run social media ads from your phone. These are useful for reaching out to non-followers. 

Email marketing

You can also run email campaigns from an app on your phone. If you’re out of the office and you want to send out a quick email to all your subscribers, you can do so using your phone. This could be particularly useful when it comes to sending out urgent information that may need to go out there and then.

CRM apps can also be used to schedule various automated emails. This could include appointment reminder emails or follow-up emails. 

Website marketing

You can also create content for your website using your smartphone. If you’re a tradesperson, you can take photographs of projects you work on and share them on your website (with the client’s permission). It’s even possible to write blog posts on a smartphone (although a laptop is likely to be preferable for this due to ease of typing).

It’s also possible to run and manage search ad campaigns from your phone. The likes of Google Ads has its own app for handling Google ad campaigns, allowing you to keep on top of PPC advertising from any location.

Telemarketing

You can also call up potential clients or follow up leads with phone calls using your smartphone. This is useful when you have a list of people to call and are out of the office.

Setting up a VoIP number could allow you to use the same number from a range of devices so that you don’t have to give out multiple numbers to clients. All voice messages can also be viewed on your phone instead of having to check an answer machine in your office. 

SMS marketing

SMS marketing involves marketing via text message. Using SMS management apps you can send bulk text messages similar to how you would send email campaigns.

Managing this from your phone makes sense, because you can more easily visualise your text messages. You can also keep up communication with leads via text instead of calling for a less invasive approach. 

Conclusion

With these three tools, you can carry out a range of different forms of marketing. Business cards can be the ultimate networking tools for helping you to stay connected to the people you meet in person. Branded pens can be great for building brand awareness and leaving a lasting impression. Your smartphone can meanwhile enable you to reach out to customers remotely - via the web, text and phone call.