Class is In Session for Promotional Products

Promotional products tend to hide in plain sight sometimes. Unless you’re paying attention, you probably miss quite a few items throughout your daily life that would qualify as promotional products — items that were printed or decorated with a brand name on them with the intention of creating brand visibility.

Think back to your school days. It was hard enough to pay attention in algebra, but to notice all of the promotional opportunities? It probably wasn’t top of mind — especially in the period after lunch, which should be known as “the forgotten class.”

But educational institutions, from pre-K all the way up to universities, are some of the biggest drivers of sales for promotional products distributors. And while you might think that summer is the offseason for schools, you can earn year-round business — across a variety of product categories — from schools. That is, of course, if you’ve studied and learned how to sell these sorts of products to customers in the education vertical.

The Facts

ASI Research found that education is the single leading market for promotional product sales, having generated approximately $3.6 billion in sales, accounting for 14% of the total overall promotional products market.

This is not a new trend, either. This same research found that education has been the leading customer vertical of the promotional products industry for nine of the past 10 years. The only outlier was 2020, when healthcare took over the top spot, though education was a close second.

It’s not limited to larger or smaller distributors, either. It’s across the board and across small, medium, and large distributorships.

As for the pool of customers, the sheer number of educational institutions in the U.S. means there are thousands of potential new customers for distributors.

There are more than 5,000 colleges, 7,000-plus trade schools, and approximately 95,000 primary and secondary schools in the U.S.

With more than 20% of the U.S. population under 18 (of school age) that means more than 20% of the U.S. population is a potential end-user of these products.

Don’t limit yourself to the students, though. Each of these tens of thousands of schools and institutions in the U.S. have staff who need items, such as folders, writing instruments, and apparel, not to mention the signage and other products that adorn the walls.

What They’re Buying

It’s important to understand the sheer size and scope of the educational market opportunity. | Credit: Liquid Screen Designs

Understanding the sheer scope of the educational market within promo, you can start to think about what products you want to sell. This can vary depending on your target end-user. Are they going to students? Are they going to staff? Are they going to prospective students?

If we’re talking about trending items, any parent of a school-aged child can tell you that water bottles are full-on status symbols.

“When I was a kid, people didn’t bring water bottles, you just drank from the fountain,” Bryan Goltzman, owner of Liquid Screen Designs in Minneapolis, Minnesota, says. “Now my kids go to school every day and they’re bringing water bottles with them. And they don’t always bring them home. Every school needs a ton of water bottles available to the kids. So, they’re giving those away.”

Social media influences the drinkware item du jour, and right now it’s the big 40-oz. tumblers made popular by Stanley. The bigger, the better in drinkware.

But what about the teachers?

“We’re seeing a lot of teacher appreciation [programs],” Goltzman says.

For both teachers and parents, who are likely done growing, apparel items from name-brands can make for a promotional product that they’ll hold onto for a long time.

“I bought something when my son was in kindergarten, and he’s now in 7th grade,” Goltzman says. “I’ve been wearing it for seven years. So, spend a little more on them.”

There are opportunities for more cost-efficient promos in education, though.

“First of all, a pencil costs virtually nothing, so that’s easy,” Goltzman says.

The trick here is that you can sell promo for the educational market without going directly to the schools, because the school is simply one piece of the overall community puzzle.

“We have realtors and children’s dentists who buy pencils and then go to the schools close to them and say, ‘You know, I have 1,000 pencils to donate to the school, if you want them, here you go,’ and they can give them out and it creates an impression,” Goltzman says.

Graduating to Higher Education

According to Cortney Goodson, director of contracts and licensing for Blink Marketing, if a distributor wants to focus on higher education, they should reach out to the university licensing department first. | Credit: Blink Marketing

For those who want to target one of the colleges and universities rather than local elementary, middle, or high schools, your sales approach and opportunities can differ.

Cortney Goodson, director of contracts and licensing for Blink Marketing, oversees the distributor’s collegiate sales team.

Goodson has paid attention to what sorts of products are especially popular throughout the school year for higher education end-users.

“Drinkware, writing instruments, and stickers are consistently in demand throughout the year,” she says. “At the start of semesters, there’s usually a spike in demand for stickers, and health and beauty products.

Apparel and drinkware tend to be more popular toward the end of the year. However, these trends can vary depending on the specific campus departments a distributor is working with.”

Within higher education, distributors need to be more wary of licensing than they might for their local high school or elementary school. Think about Division I schools whose mascots and logos are proprietary and well-known.

“There are high schools that have licensing departments as well, but it is not common,” Goodson says. “If a distributor wants to have a higher education focus, I suggest reaching out to a local university licensing department first. There’s a lot of red tape and hoops to jump through, so it’s best to start at the source.”

It’s an interesting time for branding in college sports. For the first time, student-athletes are able to monetize their names, image, and likeness (NIL). In the past, student-athletes were strictly forbidden from this, but with new legislation and rules within the NCAA, schools are using it as a recruitment tactic to draw students to their program. They even try to entice recruits with the promise of robust merchandising platforms, typically through e-commerce stores run by outside distributors and print-on-demand platforms.

It’s not unlike the modern process of recruiting students to private schools down to the K-12 level. Goltzman uses the phrase “recruitment cost” when talking about his company’s merchandise programs with private schools, and how that can call for higher-priced items.

“If you get a new student into a private school, if the school costs $10,000 a year, and they’re going from kindergarten through 12th grade, you’re talking about $120,000, right?” he says. “So what is the cost to recruit those people? Maybe the $5 notebook is not the item. Maybe it’s worth spending $20 or $25. So that’s where we do a little bit of that up-sell.”

For those in the print world primarily, these opportunities can also come with a printed kit with custom packaging, or boxes full of branded items like apparel and drinkware to entice prospective students or welcome new students to campus.

The breakdown between end-users is fairly close: ASI Research found that 85% of education end-buyers give items to current customers (students), 76% give them to employees, and 67% give them to prospects.
Does that make sense to everyone? Did you make sure to take a few notes? There won’t be a quiz at the end, but let’s just say that this is a pass-fail course, and the only assignment is to start reaching out to the plentiful education customers at your disposal. Because once you get one, you’re likely to get more.