If you're like most marketers, you're always on the look out for new ways of getting your message in front of your prospects, for new ways of getting new customers or your existing customers to buy more from you. Many of my small business owners consistently fail to use promotional products, even when it's easy to find a promotional product that naturally connects with their products or services, like USB drives and computer repair services, for instance.

Promotional USB drives, like so many things, can be personalized and, therefore, turned into nice promotional products. They're a new invention (unless you're speaking in computer technology years). They were, till not so long ago, a novelty item and, therefore, not that good for promotional marketing. (Let's remember that people don't hold interest in novelty items as long as they do in useful items.)

Of course, since these days USB flash drives can hold a lot of information people do like them, do use them. So now they're no longer the novelty items they used to be. Which means now they're really good for promotional marketing. Not as good as personalized coffee mugs or personalized water bottles - more people drink coffee and water than use USB flash drives, but still good.

A lot of people these days are concerned about the environment. Your promotional USB drives can be made of bamboo, which is an eco-friendly way of making them. If your prospects are concerned about the environment, you score more points. And scoring points with your prospects is the name of the game.

I see a lot of promotional items that only have the company logo. I assume the desire behind them is to create name/logo awareness. I'm of the opinion that you can create that even if you have a call to action. I'm of the opinion, therefore, that it's wasteful to only have a log.

How can you have a logo and a call to action on a surface as small as the ones offered by USB drives?

The drive itself may be small, but the cover doesn't have to be. True, it's not going to be very large but it can have sides that are 1.25 inches by 2.5 inches. Large enough that you can have a logo and a phone number or URL. "13% off at http://www.domainname.com/13%off." Or "Call xxx-xxx-xxxx for 13% off."

In other words, I'm all for promotional USB flash drives and I think you should be too.