# Should You Invest In Marketing Swag? \| Ep\. \#396

**URL:** https://www.singlegrain.com/episodes/marketing-school/should-you-invest-in-marketing-swag-ep-396/  
**Published:** 2017-08-31  
**Updated:** 2017-12-06  
**Author:** Selena Templeton  
**Summary:** In Episode \#396, Eric and Neil discuss whether or not you should invest in typical marketing swag\. Tune in to learn why Eric and Neil won’t spend a cent on\.\.\.  

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In Episode #396, Eric and Neil discuss whether or not you should invest in typical marketing swag. Tune in to learn why Eric and Neil won’t spend a cent on swag while Sujan, Single Grain’s founder, blogged that he made $500K from it.

### Time Stamped Show Notes:

- 00:27 – Today’s topic: _Should You Invest In Marketing Swag?_
- 00:37 – Single Grain’s founder, [Sujan Patel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sujanpatel), had a lot of shirts and he made $500K out of it
- 00:50 – Personally, Eric won’t invest into swag
    - 00:58 – Although, he has gotten useful swag from conferences before, and every time he uses the swag, he remembers the conference
    - 01:18 – “You want to have stuff that people actually use”
- 01:37 – Neil believes that if you’re a big company, giving away swag is a good strategy in branding
- 01:45 – Swag can be too expensive for startups and it’s difficult to track your ROI from it
- 02:29 – If you want to try something, go to [Startup Drugz](https://startupdrugz.com/) instead
- 03:04 – Neil doesn’t create swag and would not even if he was a big company
- 03:30 – [Marketing School](http://marketingschool.io/) is giving away a free 1 year subscription of [Crazy Egg](https://www.crazyegg.com/) which is a visual analytics tool
    - 04:25 – Go to [SingleGrain.com/giveaway](http://singlegrain.com/giveaway) for multiple entries
- 04:38 – That’s it for today’s episode!

### 3 Key Points:

1. Big companies with extra funds can spend on swag because it _can_ be a good branding strategy—“can” is the keyword.
2. If you are going to invest in swag, make it as usable as possible, and don’t go cheap—you want it to last for a while.
3. Because of the associated costs with having quality swag most startups and small businesses shouldn’t consider it.

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