The standard promotional keyring is a very powerful selling tool for gaining repeat business that is often overlooked by many potential businesses. They are cheap enough so that they can be bought in bulk, sometimes for next to nothing when you are looking at the cheaper plastic keyrings. This makes them well worthy of mass distribution techniques to get them out to your potential client base. But sometimes business owners don’t realise that they could be using them to increase their turnover, for next to nothing.
I was recently talking to a local locksmith who was keen to get more repeat business – aren’t we all! In his business he is handling hundreds of locks and keys daily, and sometimes these locks are being sold with quite high price tags. But he hadn’t even thought of using promotional keyrings to boost the number of return customers and referrals.
So I made the suggestion that he had a few hundred promotional plastic keyrings made up, just with his logo and contact telephone number and maybe his website address on them. Just a simple keyring that reminds his customers where they got the lock or keys from and allows them to contact him again in the future. It seemed strange to me that someone handling hundreds of keys, both car keys and house keys, could neglect to attach a simple keyring that costs so little to products that can cost hundreds. It’s such a simple idea, yet it works.
My recommendation is that every lock being despatched has at least one keyring added to the box of keys for the customer to find. If he wants to, he can even announce in his sales materials and on the website that there is a free keyring with every order. Why not? It might just be the incentive that entices someone to buy from him – at no extra cost.
Also with every set of keys cut for customers that visit the shop or he goes out to see, either slip a keyring onto a key or again, just include it in the box of keys the customer takes home.
This simple technique works on many levels for tradesmen always dealing with their public.