There’s a reason we named our company Rocket Badge! While we make a wide range of compelling products, badges remain one of our top sellers for businesses of all sizes. Custom badges are a cost-effective, highly visible way to get your brand out there without breaking your budget. Badges can also be rapidly designed and produced, making them a great choice for a last-minute event or quickly-approaching product launch. Badges are incredibly versatile and can be used in limitless ways to drive awareness, engage customers, inspire staff and build loyalty. There’s not many promotional items that people will proudly display and even collect, but badges are one of them! In this post, we present 10 creative and proven ways that your business can leverage custom badges to raise awareness for your brand, promote customer engagement and increase your bottom line. How else have you used badges to boost your business?
1. Give them away!
Are you launching a new product or opening a second location? You have a tremendous opportunity at this moment to build excitement around your big news with the right giveaway item. With giveaways, the goal is to connect with and introduce people to your brand and inspire them to develop a longer-term relationship with your product or service. Because the goal is to reach as many people as possible, look for cost-effective giveaway items, like button badges. Button badges will extend your visibility because they get noticed when worn on coats, backpacks and hats. They’re also incredibly speedy! If you have a fast-approaching launch, button badges are a great choice for your giveaway.
2. Sell your badges.
Custom badges can be a big business, no matter what line of work you are in. Some of our clients have built successful enterprises around designing and selling creative badges. Other clients have created custom badges to sell online or in retail locations alongside existing products for an additional income stream. While small in size, a compelling design or an entire set of badges can help you diversify your product offerings, and your profit. Here’s an example from a popular streetwear clothing label, Dropdead. In addition to its line of trendy, high-end clothing, Dropdead also sells a set of super cool badges at a lower price point, which can help build greater customer loyalty with even more people.
3. Wear them!
Badges are wearables! Think internally about how badges can boost your business. If you and your staff regularly interact with customers in person, perhaps at a retail or healthcare location, consider adding name badges to your overall marketing or customer service strategy. Well-designed and eye-catching name badges will enable your customers to form a better connection with your staff, and help build trust and familiarity. If you do more business-to-business work, wearable badges can also convey a team’s excitement around a product launch or sales campaign. Here’s an example we did for Nando’s. We love how bright and simple the design and message is.
4. Take your badges to your events.
Expos, festivals, staff holiday parties, conferences and tradeshows – badges are perfect for all kinds of events. For large conferences, consider designing a special button badge and giving these away at a booth or a table. Another idea is to design a limited-edition, high-end button and offer this for sale or as a raffle prize. Badges also make the perfect item to commemorate special moments, such as a graduation. See the example below from Kings College. Notice the clever use of the #FOREVERKINGS hashtag on the backing card! Encourage your customers or team to take a photo of the special moment and post it on social media along with the hashtag.
5. Make your badges part of a collection.
In our more than 25 years of experience, one thing we’ve learned is that people of all ages enjoy collecting badges. Some people seek music-inspired badges to wear on backpacks, others seek badges that reflect passions or hobbies, like vintage cars. Collectable badge sets are a proven way to engage people who like your brand or care about your event; in turn, by wearing the badge they’ll magnify your message to others. For example, we worked with the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, a global motorcycle event that raises awareness of prostate cancer and male suicide prevention, to design a series of coveted and collectable ride badges.
6. Use badges as special rewards.
Another way to use badges to boost your business is to reward employees with special badges for a job well done. Reward badges can be a valuable component of your overall employee recognition and motivation efforts. They can also help your company instill pride among workers and contribute to a positive company culture. For example, Herbalife uses custom badges to reward their sales team for reaching certain milestones and achievements. The badges might even inspire some fun-loving competition amongst your sales team to achieve the highest numbers possible.
7. Give badges as service awards or gifts.
An award of service recognises a long-standing employee and presents an opportunity to thank someone for their dedication, service and contribution over time, whether it’s five, ten or even 50 years! Or, create a line of special gift badges that you can keep on hand to use for various purposes, like for VIP customers or to honour staff birthdays. At Rocket Badge, we have a wide range of exquisite finishes and embellishments to consider for gift badges, like gold or sterling silver, jewels and precious or semi-precious stones and even brilliant glitter-finished badges, like the example below.
8. Welcome new employees with a special badge.
Use custom badges to welcome new employees to the company! Personalised badges are a perfect vehicle for making a great first impression and promoting your positive, caring company culture. Badges are low-cost enough that you can make this a sustainable and scalable part of your onboarding process. As a bonus, taking steps now to properly welcome new hires could result in greater employee satisfaction and retention down the road, which will save your business time and money and contribute to a better company culture for all.
9. Promote a launch.
Launching a new product? Opening a new office? Have a new collaboration in the works? Spread the word, and publicly recognise your partners, with a special badge! Badges are a great way to promote a launch because you can create special, one-off orders with tremendous potential for visibility when worn by your staff and customers. At Rocket Badge, we’ve had the opportunity to work on some really interesting launches, including a badge to celebrate a collaboration between Karl Lagerfeld and Kaia Gerber. The badge set (below) honours a new line from the iconic fashion designer and the top model. Often, badges can be a welcome option for customers who love a product line but want a more affordable way to engage with it.
10. Endless possibilities
The only limit to how you use badges for your business is your own creativity! What ideas did we miss? We’d love to hear how your business or organisation is using badges to boost your bottom line. Please reach out and share your ideas with us – perhaps we can feature it in an upcoming blog!