Promotional USb Compass

Looking at this device, it has to be asked how many times you have recently used a compass or even needed to use one.  With technology nowadays there is little need for devices like compasses.  If you are the outdoors type and love hiking or rambling etc. it’s doubtful that you’d risk successfully returning to your camp on a compass USB flash drive, you’d probably have a little more sophisticated kit.  Even if you do decide to use a the USB compass flash drive for a both of it’s purposes as a data storage device and a compass there are very few times that you would need both in the same day.

So if the Compass USB flash drive doesn’t double well as a compass, what is it for?  This particular design would be a great promotional tool for certain companies.  Boat builders, consultancies or outdoor retailers are a few companies that would largely benefit from using this branded compass USB.

On another note, this USB flash drive reminds us of the difficulty that consumers can have buying branded USB flash drives in the slowly crowding market.  Navigating your way through the numerous company websites to find the right branded USB supplier can be tiring and tedious.  To help with this we have created a small list of things to check when shopping for your branded flash drives:

1. The company is reputable and has a valued client portfolio.  To view some of our previous clients visit our branded USB testimonials page.
2. Ensure that all branded USB memory sticks are fitted with grade A chips.  All of our flash drives are fitted with grade A chips and go through a virus check and quality control process.
3. Understand all of the costing upfront and keep it as simple as possible.  At USB2U we have made the costing simple by offering free UK delivery, free printing, free data load, free lanyards or key rings and free gift boxes.  To find out more visit our why choose USB2U page.
4. Good quality product visuals are important to ensure that your logo flash drives will look exactly how you want them to.  We have an in house design team that provides impeccable quality visual mock-ups.
5. Fell the quality of the product yourself.  We send out free samples of our products so that customers can witness the top quality of our products first hand.

With these coordinates in mind we are sure that you will navigate past all other branded USB flash drive suppliers and always buy your promotional USB flash drives through USB2U.

Exhibiting at a trade show is typically a pretty large investment in terms of money, time and manpower and as such it’s critical that this commitment is fully optimised. Whilst lots of energy tends to get put into the location of the stand in the exhibition hall, the stand design, the lighting of the stand and who’s going to staff the stand sometimes the little, but nevertheless important, things like giveaways and collateral for the show tend to get overlooked.

Whilst an exciting and innovative promotional tool or giveaway designed to draw people to the stand won’t make or break a show it will certainly help to maximise your investment. When you’re competing for the attention of potential customers against hundreds of other exhibitors its key that you equip you sales team with all the tools they need and a giveaway that pulls people into the stand works.

Your challenge is to decide what’s the best product for you and for your target audience. What really is going to deliver the greatest footfall onto your stand and what’s going to get your product and company to stand out from all the others that will be visited during the show?  After all we all know that at the end of most shows the attendees leave with tired legs, heavy hearts and laden down with carrier bags full of brochures and leaflets.  What you have to do during the show is “wow” them, ideally secure an order but failing that get them interested enough so that when they are back at home or work they recall your company and follow up with an enquiry.

There are lots of inexpensive giveaways that work on one level like printed bags which double as a “walking advert” for your brand or printed usb pens, which cost pennies. There are even sweets that can be printed with your brand and help get people to approach your stand. The problem with these is that they are either eaten at the event or thrown away after the event! With all of these simple ideas there is very little carry through post the event, there is no incentive to use them on an on-going basis and they don’t deliver much information about you’re company or products.

One product that is growing in popularity for use at tradeshows is the promotional USB flash drive. Whilst flash drives might initially seem too expensive to use a “giveaway” bear in mind that if you pre-load all of your sales material onto the promotional flash drive you can reduce significantly your brochure print costs and your storage and transportation costs. Because you can load data onto the flash drives right up to the start of the show (and even during the show if you wish) you can be much more flexible in terms of what brochures and data you take with you to the show. More fundamentally people like to be given memory sticks and they will keep them and use them after the show.

The on-going use of a printed usb flash drive means after the show means your brand will continue to get exposed and your sales material will be there every time the flash drive is inserted into a PC.  So, in terms of drawing prospects to your stand and delivering sales leads to your company branded flash drives deliver.

The great thing about the modern range of promotional usb flash drive products is that they can be tailored to your every need in order to maximise the benefit from using the product. For example, if a company specialises in wood supplies, why not offer usb stick made from wood. The traditional type of usb flash drive will be plastic and rather plain but the advances in technology means that the container for the drive can come in all different sizes and from all different materials. The limit on what can be used for a flash drive is probably only bound by imagination but there are obvious budgetary and usefulness constraints placed upon this type of product. It may cost a bit more to utilise the promotional element of the flash drive but it has to be questioned if the cost effective element is then worth it. Many firms would be happier to pay a higher price for a promotional tool if it guaranteed that they would have a better chance of being recognised by a firm and hopefully earning more business.

In the current economic climate, it is important for a firm to do everything that they can to gain an edge over their rivals and this is exactly what a promotional usb flash drive can do. The effectiveness of this product would pay for itself in no time at all and would help to mark out the firm as one of innovative thinking and embracing new ideas. Sometimes the additional image benefits of these promotional tasks are as important as the actual promotional work itself and this is certainly an area where this product will assist with.

If you have not considered if a promotional usb flash drive is right for you and your promotional needs, perhaps it is time to give it some thought. As more and more firms become comfortable with the digital age, providing catalogues and brochures in an electronic format is more attractive and a lot more environmentally friendly. This means that you can be seen as a firm who is pushing all the right boundaries by embracing the advantages offered by using a promotional usb flash drive product.

One of the key things to consider when ordering Branded USB Memory sticks is how these are going to be handed to / used by clients as this will have a bearing on the type of packaging.

The following is a list of options that will help you to decide.

No packaging. If you already packaging to insert the Branded Memory Stick into them they can be despatched with no packaging. Ensure they are either placed into individual bubble bags or in tray to avoid them scratching.

Small Cardboard Box. This entry level box protects the customised memory sticks and is very cost effective. Most suppliers will provide these free of charge. Click here.

Boxes with windows. These are ideal to show the Branded Memory Sticks off in its full glory as they can be positioned to appear in the window.
Click here.

Tin Boxes. These gives the Promotional Memory Drive greater gravitas and is an ideal executive gift box. Click here.

Blister Pack. If the Branded Memory Sticks are for retail use then blister packaging may be the solution. It allows the memory sticks to be displayed and a printed card inserted. Click here.

Other things of note:

• All boxes can be printed with a logo or marketing message
• Make sure the size of the packaging will allow for any accessories e.g. Branded lanyard
• Ensure that you order your packaging with the memory sticks, otherwise if these are shipped in separately you would be charged duty on the shippment.
• Suppliers are now offering packaging in recycled material – worth asking.
• Remember the bigger and heavier the packaging the more it will cost to ship the Branded Memory sticks in.

Many businesses are now using usb sticks to store and pass their information and data between their staff members so you can imagine that a promotional usb stick would be of benefit to a great number of firms. Many of the promotional products that are sent to firms look great but have no real purpose which means they are probably stored away in a desk or unseen cupboard. This is frustrating as it would defeat the purpose of sending out the promotional product in the first place but using a product that is in demand can see the benefits rise greatly. A firm who receives a promotional usb stick with a company’s logo or contact details branded upon it may think that the firm is in touch with their needs.

They will likely look upon them in a more favourable manner which could make all the difference when decisions are made regarding future sales and contracts. Considering the current economic climate, it is hugely important for all firms to do the very best they can to increase sales and revenue and the promotional usb stick is a very useful way of increasing brand awareness amongst potential customers. Another benefit of using a promotional usb stick can come when working with a firm who undertake a great deal of work with the supplying company. It may well be that a pre-branded usb stick would be the obvious choice of storage system to record the work and data that is relevant to the relationship between the two firms.

Being able to have all this information in the one place and conveniently stored somewhere with that firms logo on it should make it easier to be retrieved when it is needed. This should bring benefits to both parties and help to ensure that the working relationship goes very well without any hitches. With so many different promotional tools and activities available it can be very hard to find the one that is right for you and for the parties you are trying to impress but there is no doubt that the benefits that arise from using a promotional usb stick are very apparent and should see any firm being placed in a better light. At a time when gaining any competitive advantage is of the upmost importance, this may be the factor that places you ahead of any rival firms.

A few extra steps may be required to ensure files that are pre-loaded remain secure and, if extra space for storing files is provided, that the flash drive remains useful to the widest possible audience.

Let’s say, for instance, that your company wants to distribute a product catalogue or an annual report to a select group of retailers that your firm normally does business with. To reduce the cost of printing hard copies and distributing them by mail, you decide to generate a bulk order of promotional USB memory sticks for easy reference within your sales network.

How do you ensure that this competitive information doesn’t end up in the wrong hands? The first step is to distribute these memory sticks only to authorized representatives that will have likely filed non-disclosure agreements with your company in advance. This ensures a measure of control over who has the information and how it is utilized.

The second step to protecting proprietary information is to encrypt or restrict the use of the files themselves. A distributor can pre-load data files with read-only access or include password protection that requires a user to enter a password to open the file. Strong encryption technology can delete files completely after a finite number of unsuccessful attempts to open a file.

In this way, marketing agreements between retailers and manufacturers, policies and procedures, and confidential data are protected and the risk of unauthorized access by competitors is minimized. If files are accidentally deleted or a flash drive malfunctions, a control group could retrieve the memory stick before replacing it.

These measures apply most in institutions where information is most specific and ultimately valuable, like government, non-profit, and civic organizations, universities, large corporations, and private interest groups.

promotional USB memory sticks distributed to employees or managers of these entities are not just handy tools for sharing information, but are company-owned assets that are subject to accountability and proper use, especially among principals with some measure of authority and cultural or professional influence.

Another factor in relation to data integrity and promotional USB memory is the issue of compatibility. In some cases, older computers will have problems running pre-loaded movies or applications that are native to newer operating systems like Windows Vista and Windows 7.

In addition, security firewalls designed by IT groups to protect corporate networks may prevent auto run capabilities for audio and video files or certain file types that could be used to spread computer viruses.

A corporation or an LLC, then, has important challenges with regard to IT security and data integrity. When designing and ordering promotional USB memory sticks, these firms must develop acceptable use policies, limit access to computers with USB drives, and keep antivirus software programs up-to-date to protect their company’s interests and ensure successful transactions when sharing information.

One of the key decisions to make when purchasing Branded USB Memory sticks in the storage capacity.

Before delving into which capacity to select a short technical overview as is useful to understand the measurement terminology used when defining memory capacity.

Electronic data is measured in ‘bytes’. Multiples of these are:

•      1 Kilobyte (KB) is equal to 1,024 bytes

•      1 Megabyte (MB) is equal to 1,024 Kilobytes (1,048,576 bytes)

•      1 Gigabyte (GB) is equal to 1,024 Megabytes (1,073,741,824 bytes)

Branded USB Memory sticks range from 32MB to 16GB. They double up in size from 32MB:

•      32MB (almost obsolete)
•      64MB
•      128MB
•      256MB
•      512MB
•      1GB
•      2GB
•      4GB
•      8GB
•      16GB

You need to be aware that all Promotional USB Memory sticks need a small amount of capacity to allow it them work. As a general rule of thumb around 5% of the storage capacity will be used by the Memory Stick to manage how it stores the data on the stick.

So, how much data can each stick hold? The amount of data that can be stored depends on the type of the data, such as MP3 audio files, digital photos, word files etc. and the quality for example the resolution of photos.  As a benchmark 512MB memory stick would typically store about 250 photos.

When deciding what capacity to select for your Branded USB Memory sticks you need to consider the following.

• What is the objective of your Promotional USB Memory stick campaign. If it is to provide specific data or information that is pre-loaded, then the size should match the amount of data to be loaded. If the requirement is to allow the user to use the Memory stick as a promotional keepsake, then there needs to be sufficient headroom over and above any data that you may wish to load.

• What budget do you have? The higher the capacity the higher the price. However, the price differential between a 64MB and 1GB is no longer that great.

• The market for flash memory is volatile and is driven by supply and demand. Therefore, it is worth checking if there are any special offers on different USB Memory capacity. For example it has been know for 512MB to be cheaper than 256MB.

• If the Branded USB Memory sticks are gifts for prospects or existing key clients, you need to consider the perceived value of the item you are giving. So if budget is limited it may be prudent to buy less of higher capacity Branded USB Memory sticks.

Based on the above criteria, currently the most popular capacity for Branded USB Memory sticks is 1GB, but watch this space!

Will now be looking to source most forms of USB keys from yourselves. They’re not totally common, and they come in dribs & drabs… not usually in this kind of quantity… So minimum & maximum stock levels will have to be set up for this.

Donnie Barker
Purchaser

There are typically three parts to a flash drive:

• Male type-A USB connector – provides an interface to the host computer.

• USB mass storage controller – implements the USB host controller. The controller contains a small microcontroller with a small amount of on-chip ROM and RAM.

• NAND flash memory chip – stores data. NAND flash is typically also used in digital cameras.

A typical flash memory device has a housing including a small printed circuit board (PCB), and an integral connector for connecting to a USB port on a computer. The USB flash drive is connected to a computer either by direct connection or via a USB hub. When plugged into a USB port, the computer’s operating system recognizes the flash memory device as a removable drive and allows data to be retrieved from and added to the flash memory drive. Most flash drives require no other external power source or battery power source as they become active when connected with a computer.

Computers access modern flash memory systems very much like hard disk drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is actually stored.

Nothing actually moves in a flash drive: the term drive persists because computers read and write flash-drive data using the same system commands as for a mechanical disk drive, with the storage appearing to the computer operating system and user interface as just another drive.

In a nutshell, this means because USB memory sticks need no batteries and have no moving parts, they are significantly more reliable and robust compared to older storage technologies such as floppy disks and CDR/DVD-ROM media.

The USB connector is usually protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if exposed. Most flash drives use a standard type USB connection allowing you to plug into a port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist.

The flash memory chips themselves are usually made in China and Taiwan by manufacturers such as Samsung, Micron, Hynix and Intel or other OEM brands. The chips are then assembled into the memory sticks and often branded with a customer’s logo. Click here to see a showcase of promotional USB memory sticks supplied by USB2U.

Recycled or B Grade flash is common in such a price driven market so it is always worth checking with your supplier exactly who the flash was manufactured by. At USB2U we only use the highest grade quality chips for all of our Flash drives. Be very cautious with some companies who offer Flash drives for discounted prices incorporating B Grade chips. These types of Flash drives will only last a dozen or so times before they break or become unstable.

USB Flash drives are now an incredibly popular way of storing and carrying data and their utility has driven their use in the Promotion and Incentives market where branded USB Memory Sticks have become one of the mainstays of the industry