Increasing the awareness of your product can be incredibly hard in the current economic climate, with people being more wary of how they spend on services and commodities; it's hard to gain new clients, contracts and customers. Taking all of this into account, promotion, branding and increasing business visibility is essential.

For small and emerging businesses, investing in online advertising proves to be utterly useless as most of the advertising space is dominated by large multinational corporations this makes it hard for the little guy to be seen. Recently people have been looking into more unorthodox methods of increasing the visibility of their brand through printed and branded promotional items, anything from lanyards, pens, mouse mats and coffee mugs.

So why would looking into such a thing be a good idea, or even a sure investment? Well the reason these are proving to be a huge tool in terms of promotion are the fact that they are specifically designed to be seen by as many people in the surrounding area, for example a coffee mug will be seen by everyone in the office, but the owner doesn't mind about your branding of it as long as it maintains its original functionality, after all the product must be something useful otherwise the brand would not be seen.

Promotional lanyards can also be just as effective; they are constantly presented externally allowing the wearer to effectively become a walking promotional tool in the similar manner that clothing branding adding value to clothing and at the same time acts as a marketing tool. A mouse mat is also seen all day by employees and workers, in a clear, flat visible manner. A pen is also a good idea for increasing brand awareness considering in most offices and homes, pens are few and far between, and most people don't even bother buying purpose built anymore considering the sheer volume of promotional pens that are distributed in the western world today, this proves as an advantageous fashion of getting your brand really easily into people's homes.

In conclusion, if it is all about getting your brand seen, then it's probably a bad idea to invest in internet advertising, as most people have learned how to selectively close off their brain to the parts of the page dedicated to advertising. These branded items are especially useful as a promotional method as they are everyday items that can actually be used and provide a positive experience for the end user.