Key Takeaways
• As marketing budgets tighten, distributors can demonstrate promo’s measurable ROI by positioning themselves as strategic partners.
• Strong client relationships, data-driven insights and creative, budget-conscious solutions help distributors preserve business.
For Bryan Goltzman, an inexpensive product can still have value.
The founder and president of Liquid Screen Design (asi/254663) says one of the promo campaigns he’s most proud of was for a university with a very limited budget. He and his team created a program that distributed eyeglass wipes to the student body of 20,000-30,000. With most Americans owning either a pair of eyeglasses or sunglasses, this item was inexpensive to produce but incredibly useful.
But Goltzman and his team took it a step further: Instead of printing a spot logo on the piece, they created a map of the campus that included different buildings.
“We consult clients on which products make sense for what they’re trying to achieve, even if their budgets don’t necessarily allow for the biggest expense,” he explains. “If it’s good marketing, it doesn’t necessarily matter how much it costs.”
That mantra of “doing more with less” has permeated the promo industry. There’s no shortage of potential threats to a client’s marketing budget; the latest include ongoing tariff uncertainty, geopolitical conflict and inflationary pressures that are fueling buyer hesitancy.
Chris McKee, chief revenue officer at Counselor Top 40 distributor Geiger (asi/202900), says the company’s sales were high at the start of the year, but those numbers decreased when the Iran war started in late February. “Clients don’t like uncertainty,” he notes. “And I think people are holding off for a little bit. They’re saying, ‘let’s just see what happens. Let’s see how this thing pans out.’”
In addition, rising prices mean promo merch budgets simply don’t stretch as far.
Under all that mounting pressure on marketing initiatives, how can distributors protect client spend?
Read this full article, along with other features from the 2026 Counselor State of the Industry, here.
