In business, as with many things in life, first impression last. Aside from providing stellar services and products, businesses have to go the extra mile so that they stay on top of mind of customers. A common way to do this is by providing customised promotional items that bear the name or logo of the company. Other people have also gotten in on the action with laser engraving products for special occasions. In any of these situations, laser technology stands out as the obvious solution for creating laser engraved products, gifts and promotional items.
Why use laser engraving for gifts and promotional items?
Consumers nowadays are downright obsessed with personalisation. Personalised shirts, jewelry, electronics, coffee mugs – everything has to be unique to the person who owns it.
Most people use personalisation services to go to the next level of thoughtfulness and give personalised gift items. These are usually small trinkets, such as necklace charms, keychains, paperweights, and mugs, with some sort of relevant name or passage. Cheesy as it may be, it can’t be denied that receiving a personalised gift on your birthday or any other special occasion is beyond heart-warming.
Many small businesses have taken advantage of the increasing market for personalised gifts by setting up online stores. In fact, entrepreneurs and startups regularly come up with novel laser engraving business ideas! E-commerce has become very common nowadays, aided by systems developed for secure financial transactions and tracking of orders. This has revolutionised the business landscape, allowing small businesses to compete with larger ones in terms of marketing and market reach.
E-commerce has also effectively eliminated market geographical boundaries. Right now, even the smallest online business can find a way to serve a client half the world away.
For businesses, personalised laser engraving products are all about maintaining relationships with customers. These can be given to new customers once they sign up to a service, or in addition to a product they purchased. They can also be given to regular customers during special events as a means of reconnecting with them, or they can just be given away freely in the hopes of getting new customers
By far the most common promotional item given by businesses are pens, but USB sticks, umbrellas, lighters, notebooks, and notepads are not far behind. These usually bear the company logo, name, or tagline although there may be cases when even the services they offer and their contact details are included. These items act as a form of advertisement, thinly veiled as gifts. They are a very effective way of getting the word around that your business exists.
Whether for corporate or personal clients, a service that offers laser engraving of promotional items can provide superior products due to the use of laser technology. Laser engraving is remarkably flexible, capable of a variety of designs at different levels of detail. It is the ultimate personalisation tool as it can accommodate engraving jobs of any number, on a wide range of materials, and on any orientation or surface geometry.
What are the benefits of laser engraved gifts and promotional items?
Laser engraving gives you the capability to engrave designs of the highest detail and quality on a large number of materials and items. Customised designs will come out clean and legible, even at a very small size. Quality is especially important for these applications, as the quality of the gift or promotional item directly reflects on the person or corporation that gives you the item.
There is no need to be intimidated of laser engraving technology. Most manufacturers provide turnkey laser engraving machines that have manageable technical learning curves. They are easy to use and require minimal setup. The manufacturing process is made simple by an intuitive digital process, making laser engraving nearly as simple as printing a design on a piece of paper.
The laser process is also mostly automated, and as a result, it does not suffer delays due to the need for human intervention when changing designs or changing the settings of the light source. Finishing a job is incredibly fast – for common applications, such as in engravings pens, a design can be completed in a matter of seconds.
The automated process also ensures that designs come out at the same level of quality every time. Optimal marking settings for each design can also be saved using the included software, saving time when repeat jobs come up.
Laser engraving machines, which can be largely automated, produce results of consistent quality. The process is highly repeatable and reliable.
A major cost-driving factor of CNC milling is the wear and tear that the milling cutters go through, creating the need to replace them regularly. This is not an issue with laser engraving. Being a non-contact process with minimal moving parts, the parts do not suffer as much wear and tear. The objects being engraved also does not need to endure the stress of being milled or being clamped down, reducing the chances of secondary damage or deformation. The reduced need for parts replacement as well as the reduction of rejects due to secondary damage means that laser engraving will be the more cost-effective option in the long run.
Laser engraving can work with many types of materials without the need for time-consuming adjustment of parts or tools. Most of the materials used for trophies and medals – metal, brass, plastic, wood, acrylic, marble, and leather – can be engraved using a laser etching process. For example, within the product personalisation industry, laser engraving pens is one of the most common uses of the technology. There may be a need to make adjustments to the lens or the focus settings of the laser engraving machine when changing over from one material to the other, but this is a step that takes no more than a few minutes.
Summary
The increasing popularity of making and giving personalised items, coupled with the rise of e-commerce, has led to a growth in the market for custom engraving services. Businesses have also been using custom personalisation services to make promotional items that have been a great help for their marketing and advertising.
In recent years, laser engraving technology has served this market by providing a solution that is flexible, accurate, high quality, fast, and cost-effective. By being economical even in small-scale manufacturing, laser engraving allows access to small and big orders alike. If you deem business flexibility and a high quality of products as important metrics for your customisation business, then you cannot go wrong with laser engraved products and laser engraving of promotional items.
