Every business has encountered this road block—it's called "Which promotional item to buy?!" If you feel overwhelmed with the thousands and thousands of promotional products bombarding you both online and offline, and if you simply do not know which best suits your promotional campaign, event, or need, it's perfectly understandable!

Choosing the most effective is crucial to get your message across to your audiences. For this, sound knowledge of industry trends helps much.

Of the myriads of custom promotional items, certain items emerge as the most popular and most popular year after year. For example, pens and other writing instruments command the promotional market taking up an almost 50% slot, closely followed by shirts and calendars as close contenders. Following these, bags, headwear, desk and office accessories, food items and mugs, are some of the most owned in the U.S.A., in decreasing order of popularity.

However, before you take a decision based on this information, consider also the statistics for promo items which command the greatest visibility. These are items that wield the greatest promotional prowess over others. They are visible to the greatest number of people at any given point in time, and thus increase brand presence and impression. In order of highest visibility to lowest, promotional bags and totes top the list, followed by shirts, caps, jackets and outerwear, electronics, desk accessories, writing instruments, glassware and mugs, calendars, health products, automotive, and food items.

Clearly, bags and totes make the highest number of impressions with users and are the most effective of all giveaways. Promotional bags can in fact generate over 1000 views in just one month, making them the best choice for promotions and advertising campaigns. Pens and writing instruments are certainly priced lower and thus they command high volumes of sales and popularity, but when one considers usage of such a product, it's evident that it does not generate as high a visibility as do bags, which by sheer method of usage make more eye contact, making them perfect to customize with a company logo.

With these knowledge of these stats you can now determine what best suits your promotional needs.