If you’ve spent or you’re about to spend some of your marketing budget on branded USB memory sticks then you’re going to be in good company because USB memory sticks are very popular at the moment. Their growing popularity is underpinned by their high perceived value, their ease of use and their portability and of course they are unique amongst promotional items because you can pre-load them with your company’s sales material, brochures and media files.

Branded USB memory sticks, like all of the best promotional products, are great brand advocates because they will get used over and over again and as such your brand will get lots of exposure. With on-going repeat usage the user forms a positive affinity with the USB memory stick and this positive affinity should transfer to your company and your brand.

Ensuring the on-going and regular usage of the USB memory stick is critical in ensuring your get the best return for your marketing spend. The danger of buying USB memory sticks that have relatively small memory is that they won’t get used because they’re simply not big enough (in storage terms) to be of any use to the recipient. Similarly if you buy USB memory sticks but pre-load them with your own data and “lock” this data so it cannot be erased you’re effectively giving away an expensive CD that has limited on-going use to the user once they’ve used the pre-loaded data.

Keyrings for USB Flash Drives

A more sensible approach is to buy a USB memory stick with a reasonable amount of storage and make sure that the user has at least 1GB of memory available to them. This way you should be pretty confident that the USB flash drives will be used on an on-going basis and that your brand will bet the exposure it deserves.

Another sensible thing you can do is to supply your branded USB flash drives with a lanyard (neck strap) or even better a keyring. Keyrings for USB sticks cost pennies but they help to ensure that the user of the flash drive remains in the possession of the intended recipient. If you give away flash drives without any easy means of attaching them to bags, clothing or other keyrings then irrespective of how good the drives are or how much memory you make available to the user they’re likely to go astray. In the worst case rather than a positive affinity to the stick there is a real danger that having used the stick to store personal data on that the user will think negatively about the stick and any brand printed on it if they lose it!!

Our advice – always supply your branded USB memory sticks with either a lanyard or a key ring attachment.