The post-COVID resurgence of in-person events has had a spillover effect on the branded promotional merchandise industry. Companies need giveaways to spread the brand, leading to increasing orders for branded promotional items ranging from apparel and office supplies to drinkware, electronics, and scores of other tools.

Unfortunately, the recent implementation of tariffs on goods imported from Canada, Mexico and China—the primary suppliers of many promotional products—are expected to have a profound impact on the promotional merchandise industry. There have been hints that higher tariffs may be coming for select goods from Europe as well. Although there is a certain amount of gamesmanship and negotiating going on, causing delays in the implementation, it’s a virtual certainty that changes are afoot.

Today’s era of multichannel marketing demands that you engage your target audience every day across multiple platforms and media:  social, direct mail, websites, events, videos, mobile, messaging, retail, and banner ads.

This requires a solution that allows your sales and marketing teams to order and process materials for every channel you use, making everything they need readily available right at their fingertips.

We’ve all heard the phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff.” That’s great advice—at least, for most situations.

But when it comes to event management and fulfillment, it’s almost all “small stuff.” The big stuff—like booth construction, signage, product displays—is right there in front of you, easy to see, track, and fix if needed. Instead, it’s the dozens of often overlooked administrative and organizational tasks that pose the real challenge. Collectively these jobs make an oversized contribution to the ultimate success of every trade show, conference, and seminar—and it’s not uncommon for many of them to slip through the cracks.

In fact, the small stuff is so important to effective event management that it brings to mind another popular phrase: “The devil is in the details.”

Anyone who works in sales or marketing within the medical device industry understands that they must deal with numerous challenges and restrictions that impact their ability to do business effectively and efficiently.

Over the years, a number of regulations including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the Anti-Kickback Statute have been imposed to protect patient privacy, ensure quality care, and prevent fraud within the healthcare system. While these regulations do a great job of achieving their goals, they also add several layers of bureaucracy and security to what used to be a fairly simple and straightforward sales process.

While this can be frustrating for marketers, there are ways to navigate around the system to overcome—or effectively avoid—many of these roadblocks. It requires a more “old school” approach that features a return to basics and a revival of old skillsets that will take many back to the early days of marketing fulfillment.

As a marketing professional, you probably don’t need to be told that branded promotional products are big business.

Companies today devote millions of their annual marketing budget to corporate-branded swag, apparel, and various other promo items for prospects, customers, partners, and employees. According to an article on LinkedIn, companies allocate 15% to 20% of their marketing budget to events, trade shows or external branding, a large portion of which is earmarked for promotional products. In the U.S. alone, that translates to between $21.2 billion and $26 billion annually, depending on the source; worldwide, that figure is far higher.

That is a lot of money. Yet shockingly, despite the huge budgets devoted to this space, many companies have no idea what promotional materials they currently have in inventory, where those items are, or how much of that inventory has actually been handed out.