Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Personalised Lanyards - Great for Branding

These days, most large companies take the security of their staff and their premises very seriously, and employees and visitors are generally required to have ID badges on their person at all times. This means the humble lanyard has become very popular when it comes to providing a secure way of holding ID badges around the neck.

Savvy employers are now making the most of lanyards and are having them personalised with a company logo as they know that this means getting the company name out there as a cheap form of advertising.



Inexpensive Advertising
One of the biggest benefits of investing in personalised lanyards for a business is the fact that they are, as mentioned above, an inexpensive form of advertising. They can be personalised with a company logo and purchased in bulk. Most businesses know the cost of a marketing campaign can be hugely expensive, but investing in personalised lanyards can cut this cost dramatically.

Here at Ribbonworks, we provide top quality woven lanyards in a variety of colours and styles and all can be personalised with a choice of wording and images. Our personalised lanyards are also available in a variety of widths as well as having a selection of quality metal clips to suit all preferences and requirements.

Be Creative
We would advise customers to be as creative as possible when it comes to using their personalised lanyards as branding tools. To make the lanyards stand out, choose a colour that is bright and noticeable. Think about what you want from your lanyard; is it just to be used as a tool for keeping ID and security badges in place, or is it something that will be noticed and therefore provide the company with free advertising? We are betting it is the latter and, for that reason, we would urge you to use our superb service to ensure you get the most from your investment. Choose from a selection colours and styles and use images and catchy slogans to represent your company in the best possible light.

Useful Product

The great thing about lanyards is that they are so useful. They can be issued to staff to hold ID badges, as discussed above, or they can be used to hold wallets and car keys. With keys secured to a lanyard, which is in turn secured to clothing or the inside of a handbag, the issue of lost keys will never be a problem again. This will save your staff valuable time and is something they will definitely appreciate.

No matter what type of business you have, you are sure to find a use for personalised lanyards. Not only are they ideal for large corporations but also colleges and universities can make use of them as well. And companies that hold exhibitions and conferences find them extremely useful for attendees when it comes to displaying name badges.

Promotional Product
In addition to being an essential item for staff, personalised lanyards are also a fantastic promotional product that can be gifted to existing and potential customers. Because they can be used to hold keys, wallets, badges, and even mobile phones, in place, they are handy items to have. By giving them out as gifts, you will be creating brand awareness for your company.

Promotional items received by customers tend to invoke a sense of loyalty, but you need to make sure you provide your customers with top quality products. Where customers, or potential customers, are concerned, there is nothing worse than receiving a substandard gift - even if it is free. At Ribbonworks, we believe in quality from start to finish. That means we provide an excellent customer service and products made from the finest materials to ensure customer satisfaction every time. Our fast delivery and competitive pricing have helped us to become one of the leading providers of personalised promotional products in the UK.

This article originally published at here

Sunday, 29 May 2016

The Importance of ID Badges for Businesses



Brand recognition and awareness are essential for businesses of all sizes; one of the best ways to get your company name out there is through promotional products. With so many products to choose from, they are an excellent way to market your business as well as the goods or services you provide. Promotional products can be personalised with a company logo or with a message of your choice and can be sent to existing or potential customers. They are also popular as gifts at trade shows and will help to keep your business in the mind of those you meet there. There are many additional benefits to using promotional products and below we have listed just a few examples.

Proof of Employment
In large organisations, ID badges are essential. Companies employing hundreds of staff will need some way to be able to identify those who work for the organisation. It will be much easier for security staff to identify intruders if these individuals do not have the required ID badge.

Restricting Access
In many organisations, there will be certain areas that not all employees will have access to. This could be entire floors or specific offices, but ID badges can be used to give employees access to permitted areas as well as restricting access to other areas within the company.

Time Keeping
ID badges can also be employed by some companies as a type of clocking-in and -out system. Badges are swiped when the employee entered the building and swiped again upon leaving. This means that there is no need for a clock-card system or employees to sign in and out. It is also useful for emergencies as it will make it easier to identify who is in or out of the premises (think fires, etc.).

Discount Programmes
These days, everyone loves a bargain or a discount and there are various discount schemes open to the employees of large organisations. This could be discounts at restaurants, cinemas, gym memberships, retail stores, etc. An employee ID badge may be all your staff need to show to avail of these discounts.

A Sense of Importance
Employees with an ID badge might feel a sense of belonging and importance when given the ID badge. It makes new employees feel like a part of the organisation, which will help improve their productivity and performance.

Affordable Advertising
When it comes to ID badges for business, lanyards are commonly used as a way to keep these badges secure. Many astute organisations will invest in top quality personalised lanyards as they know that this is a form of affordable advertising. Every time a member of staff leaves work with their printed lanyard around their neck, they are a walking advertisement for the organisation for whom they work. This lanyard will be seen by everyone they meet and will help to create brand awareness.

Emergency Identification
While ID badges are great for business, they are also beneficial to staff in the event of an emergency. ID badges have proven vital for emergency services in the event of, for example, traffic accidents. With one phone call, emergency personnel can contact a person's place of work and find out essential information such as contact details for next of kin.

Essential for Business
Regardless of the size of a business, ID badges are becoming very important when it comes to security and branding. Many clever business owners use these badges to help identify personnel as well as combining them with a swiping system to allow access to permitted areas.

If you are considering implementing ID badges for your business, consider Ribbonworks for personalised lanyards and card holders. Our excellent service provides value for money and top quality products every time.

Saturday, 28 May 2016

How To Choose The Perfect Promotional Products for Your Company



There is no doubting the power of promotional products when it comes to advertising and marketing. They are a powerful and effective tool in terms of creating brand awareness, and they are a very affordable form of marketing for small businesses with limited advertising budgets. However, although you may know how effective promotional products are, you may be at a loss as to the best ones to choose for your company. While no single promotional product canbe described as the best one to buy, there are a few things to consider when making your decision.

Your Target Audience
The target audience is probably your number one consideration when choosing an effective promotional product. You should think about the people you want to target and what type of product they would appreciate, then choose accordingly. Think about a product that your target audience will find useful as that wayyour product will be more effective at creating brand awareness. If the product you choose is something your audience will find beneficial, your company logo will be present every time it is used,which will keep your business name in mind when the time comes for a purchase of the products or services you provide.

Your Budget
Your budget must be a consideration if you want to ensure your promotional products are cost effective. There is no point in spending a small fortune on promotional items if these are unlikely to generate the amount of sales you need to cover their cost and make a profit. Affordable items such as pens are useful and are something your target audience will always need. Nevertheless, pens can easily be lost or misplaced, so they may not be as effective as you would like. Mobile socks are current and quirky and are guaranteed to be useful to almost everyone. They are also very affordable and can be customised with a company logo.

Your Strategy
Think about what you are hoping to achieve with your promotional products. Are you expecting to make more sales or are you simply eager to get your name out there? If you are running a campaign,then your promotional product should tie in with this. If you are attending a trade fair, many promotional products will come in handy for visitors, including tote bags that will provide them with a carrier for brochures and other items received. And, while visitors are using your branded tote bag to carry their items, they are providing you with free advertising as they walk around the trade fair.

Quality
Even though your budget may be a primary consideration and you are looking for affordable promotional products, you should not settle for cheap products as the recipient could view this as a reflection of your company. The last thing you want is to be associated with less than top quality with the products and services you provide. It would be better to buy fewer items of a higher quality than to opt for bulk quantities of cheap or poorly made products that could break as soon as they are received. Receiving cheap and nasty items is worse than getting nothing at all.

Making the Right Choice for Your Business
Think carefully before investing in promotional products. While they are an excellent way to market your business, create brand awareness, and boost sales, they can be expensive and worthless if you do not take the time needed to consider your purchase.

ID Badges for Security and Promotion



As well as the risk of physical theft of property, businesses need to be aware of the dangers of cyber theft of personal information. These days, it is becoming increasingly common for businesses to be targeted for the information they hold on their customers.

Sadly, there is also the risk of security issues with staff. If you are a business owner, as much as you may want to believe that your staff are all trustworthy, you cannot be guaranteed this. Therefore, it is worth taking precautions to avoid such threats. In recent times, there have been a number of cases where staff members were stealing large amounts of cash from their employers to fund a gambling or drug habit. It is common for these cases to go unnoticed for quite a while before the company books begin to show discrepancies. It is, therefore,vital that you take the security of your business very seriously. Doing so could have a direct impact on the success or failure of your company.

How to Ensure the Security of Your Business
One of the best ways to make your business is more secure is to implement the use of ID badges for staff. ID badges mean that all staff can be identified immediately and intruders will become instantly noticeable for the lack of ID badge.

ID badges can also be used as a way to keep track of who is on the premises and what time they arrived. These badges can be swiped upon entry and exit, which means employers can track the working hours of staff. Computerised swiping systems are also ideal when it comes to quickly identifying who is in a building in the event of an emergency.

If you do want to use ID badges for security reasons, be sure to insist that staff have their badges on display at all times. This can be done with the use of woven lanyards and cardholders to keep badges in place. The lanyards can easily be hung around the necks of your staff or clipped on to the waistband of trousers or skirts.

Promoting Your Business
Lanyards are ideal when it comes to the security of your business, but they also serve another important purpose. These affordable items are perfect when it comes to the promotion of your business. They can be personalised with a company logo and are available in a variety of colours, widths and styles.

Here at Ribbonworks, we provide top quality lanyards and cardholders for businesses who want to improve their security while creating brand awareness at the same time. Lanyards are ideal for holding security badges but they are also useful for a host of other applications too. This is what makes them the perfect promotional item to be given to clients.

Our lanyards are competitively priced and made from top quality materials. We offer a choice of stock lanyards or you can work with our team to create your own customised lanyards, depending on preferences and requirements. We guarantee that you will be completely satisfied with our service and our products.

Thursday, 14 April 2016

Promotional Products: Do They Still Work?



We all love a bargain, and freebies can be even more appealing! But do people actually use promotional products, or do they just end up throwing them out? The answer lies in the quality and choice of the marketing product and its value to the customer or client's life.

When choosing a promotional product to use as an advertising gimmick, the savvy business owner needs to weigh up the pros and cons of the item of choice and decide whether it will add or detract from the business image as well as deciding whether that product is actually relevant to the business. Promotional items that look cheap and are of limited use to customers will soon end up in the bin, resulting in a negative business image and a wasted marketing budget.

Great Ideas for Practical Products

While pens, pencils, calendars and key rings may immediately spring to mind when choosing marketing gifts, these are items that tend to be chosen by businesses time and time again. And to be frank, if a calendar is not relevant to a recipient or a key ring looks cheap or uninteresting, these will soon be tossed aside or thrown out with the rubbish!

Choosing promotional gifts means selecting products that will stand out from the crowd and be used time and time again. This will ensure that a business name or logo will be foremost in the user's mind every time he or she uses that item. Choose products that are current, useful and desirable, such as protective mobile socks or mobile wrist straps, ideal in a world where mobile phone usage increases daily.

Ask the Customer

Finding out what customers may appreciate as promotional gifts would have been time-consuming a few years ago, but now, as social media usage has become a popular means of communication, businesses will find that they have a quick and simple way of finding out what customers want. For example, opening a business-related Facebook page is simple and allows direct contact with those who are interested in what the business has to offer.

Utilise the popularity of 'Facebook giveaways' by asking customers what they consider a useful promotional gift, and use the responses to make choices. A popular way to encourage social media interaction is to invite page followers to 'like and share' a promotional giveaway, spreading the page's reach towards a wider audience. And, of course, remember to reward those who have participated by giving them a gift as a thank you from the business.

Avoid Gimmicks

Every business owner, whether large or small, must focus on attracting customers to use their services or buy their products. Using gimmicks to attract business can backfire, leaving customers feeling tricked and annoyed and generating a negative feeling toward the business concerned, which may cause irreparable damage to a small business trying to survive.

Choose promotional products with a value to those receiving the gifts. Gimmicky products may convey a cheap business image and, while they may be inexpensive to purchase as part of a marketing strategy, will not be received with enthusiasm!

Wednesday, 13 April 2016

Multi-Functional Printed Lanyards

Lanyards are one of the UK's most popular promotional items, and not just because they are handy to use when combined with company ID cards.

While many of us imagine lanyards as mainly being a popular accessory for conference staff to wear, these nifty neck straps have a multitude of uses that may make you wonder how you ever lived without one!

Next time you decide to offer promotional gifts to new or existing customers, be sure to extol the virtues of printed lanyards; soon you could find your business name being worn around the necks of many grateful customers. For a marketing product that works tirelessly for any size of business, printed lanyards provide a simple yet effective way to promote a business name.

Some of the many ways that printed lanyards can be used by grateful recipients include the following ideas:

Use lanyards as a promotional tool in schools and colleges. After all, the youth of today could be customers of the future and what better way to ensure loyalty than handing out free and useful gifts? The use of printed lanyards in educational establishments will make sure that student ID cards are easily accessible, especially when going on field trips, science fairs and the many extracurricular activities that are available to students.

Using lanyards and simple ID cards is becoming popular at large weddings and other celebratory events where people may not know many of the attendees. This provides an excellent way to break the ice and get guests socialising and chatting. Handing out custom printed lanyards with the bride and groom's names and wedding date makes a wonderful wedding favour too!

Lanyards are fitted with useful clips, making them ideal for carrying items to allow the wearer to perform activities with both hands. This opens up all sorts of opportunities to promote a business by targeting specific groups of people who will find a lanyard useful. Examples include sports people who require the use of water bottle lanyards when training or competing and outdoor workers in remote areas who need to rehydrate frequently. Horse riders will also find lanyards become an essential piece of equipment to hold printed cards with emergency details should they be involved in an accident when riding far from home.

Lanyards are also ideal for using in the workplace, for carrying ID cards in an environment where it is important to be easily identified, and also for carrying objects that are essential for use in the work environment. For example, waiting staff will keep track of order books and pens if they are hanging from a lanyard; professional handymen can hang small tools and torches from them, leaving both hands free to perform essential jobs; and farmers have somewhere safe to hang tractor keys, wire cutters, hoof knives and the myriad of small items that are essential in the agricultural world.

Skiers and snowboarders also find that lanyards are invaluable for holding ski lift passes, proving more comfortable to wear than metal accessories that may rust over time.

Lanyards are suitable for everyday use and not just for sporting or work-related activities. Many people find lanyards invaluable for holding house or car keys, pens and pencils, and other items that are regularly required but often mysteriously vanish just when they are needed.

Printed lanyards also provide the perfect solution for regular mobile phone users, holding the phone in an easily accessible place. How many times have you missed an important phone call because your phone has been buried in a pocket or bag and by the time you found it, the caller had hung up? Never miss a phone call again by hanging your mobile phone from your lanyard.

Travelling groups of people such as sports teams and school bands will find that the group leader’s job is made so much easier when group members are wearing ID cards and also easily identified printed lanyards. Using a bold coloured lanyard will ensure that members can be spotted in a crowd and will avoid situations where someone gets lost.

Monday, 4 April 2016

The Many Benefits of Company ID Cards

In a world where it is important to be able to identify people for a variety of reasons, company ID cards have to be the most useful identification tools found in any workplace. These simple and innocuous little cards provide details such as name, job title and the department where an employee works and often feature a photograph for instant identification. While some are clipped to a badge, others are worn around the neck from a lanyard or simply kept in a wallet or purse to be produced whenever necessary.

Although some people may resent having to wear any form of identification, it is important to realise the many benefits – both for yourself and your place of employment. Not convinced? Read on for some valid reasons why wearing a company ID card is beneficial.



1. We live in a world where threats to security are, sadly, very real,so company ID cards can protect us as well as our colleagues and employers. ID cards offer a good way to implement access restrictions to the workplace, other related buildings, and equipment, ensuring that only those who should be in a particular area are actually there. Further threats to security are reduced by employers insisting on background checks, including police disclosure checks.

2. Many workplaces contain expensive computers, costly work tools and other items of value, and the use of ID cards ensures that nobody may enter the workplace without permission. This lessens the likelihood of theft from the workplace, and should any equipment be stolen it will be easier to trace the culprit by knowing who has been in or out of the building during the time of the theft.

3. There is nothing worse than starting a new job or moving to a new department and having to learn new names! This is when company ID cards can really benefit us on a personal level, making it easier to identify people, making working relationships easier to develop. Visible ID cards can really improve workplace relationships, creating a relaxed working atmosphere and boosting staff morale.

4. ID cards are also invaluable for improving employee-customer relationships. It is always good to know who we are talking to when we speak to a member of staff, and putting a name to a face can instantly put the customer at ease, creating positive customer relations within a business.

5. Company ID cards can provide a range of additional benefits when companies negotiate special deals and discounts with other local businesses. These benefits may cover special membership deals at gyms, discounted meals at local restaurants, and savings when shopping at stores involved in company discount schemes. A company ID card provides an easy way for employees to take advantage of any available offers and allows participating businesses to easily identify legitimate employees. Schemes such as these offer a good way to give employees a boost and a thank you for their work, and if the ID cards are worn on a branded lanyard, they also serve as an excellent marketing tool.

6. Additional benefits of company ID cards can be created by the use of magnetic stripe encoding, restricting access to buildings or rooms to just certain employees. ID cards can also function as time cards, making it easier for both staff and employers to keep tabs on working hours; they can also be integrated with a cashless payment system and used for eating in the company cafeteria, negating the need to bring money and bank cards to work.