Just because you want to get your printed pens into the hands of future clients doesn’t mean you are limited to offering them in buckets at your office, as freebies at conventions or via direct mailings. There are plenty of unconventional ways to pass out printed pens.

Holiday Gifts
Consider a special printed pen production a few months before a less-known holiday. Send a printed pen to the company’s secretary instead of the president for Secretaries Day. How about sending a special printed pen to say “thank you” to former customers for January 11 Thank You Day?

Send a “lovely” pen to a direct mailing list in the first week of February to ensure delivery by Valentine’s Day.

There’s National Nametag Day on March 11 so encourage your printed pen recipients to use your pen to write any name they like on a nametag and wear it all day.

Ask your future clients to help celebrate Write an Old Friend Day on April 27 with your printed pen.

National Columnists Day begs for your former clients to receive a promotional printed pen from you to encourage them to send a letter to their favorite (or least favorite) columnist.

How about a Christmas gift in July? An end of summer writing stick promotion at the end of summer? What about a back to school gift for teachers and school administrators in September?

October offers another unique holiday for gift giving. In addition to a highlighter Halloween gift, you could send a printed pen with a poetic advertisement to commemorate National Poetry Day on October 9. Poetry Day is quickly followed by National Author’s Day on November 1.

Everyone sends or gives out gifts for Christmas, so avoid this unless you can afford to spend a bit more than your competitors to stand out.

Tradeshow Gimmicks and Gifts
Before the tradeshow, send a printed pen announcing your new products or service to attendees and industry top dogs. They’ll come looking for you if you excite them beforehand. Offer to trade the cheap printed pen you send a month before the show for a better gift if they come see you. Have other printed promotional items on hand for these upgrades at the show.

Take your own pen to visit other business booths. Leave one with them. If they won’t come to you, go to them.

Offer different gifts to different types of clients or for entice visitors to leave more information with you for a better gift. Consider that a retail customer may buy one and tell five while a corporate customer may buy fifty and tell none. While both customers are important, the corporate client certainly raises your bottom line quicker. Consider rewarding them with a more expensive printed pen or even a printed pen set.

Create an eye catching tradeshow booth with bright colors and give away highlighter printed pens instead of the traditional ballpoint pen. This is doubly effective if you can create a themed booth using the words “light up”, “bright”, “illuminate” or another adjective that fits not only your product or service but your highlighter printed pens.