More than just a colourful dog lead for humans with an unusual name, lanyards are used extensively throughout many specialised industries for identification purposes, including government buildings, hospitals and military facilities as well recreational venues such as concerts, trade shows and exhibitions. In addition, custom lanyards provide excellent opportunities for businesses to promote their brand and products. Practical, inexpensive and totally customisable to suit the individual needs of the company and the occasion, lanyards can be attached to small pouches that can store other small branded promotional items such as pens, USB sticks making them an ideal addition to any trade show.
Lanyards as Promotional Items
Available in a broad range of colours, styles and materials, businesses and institutions can use lanyards in a whole myriad of different ways in order to aid and enhance their marketing efforts. Here’s a collection of some of the more popular uses:
Exhibition Shows – all trade show exhibitors are required to wear some form of ID for security reasons. Typically this involves the use of a custom lanyard with a branded logo attached to it. This form of identification is readily visible and easily distinguishable to floor security, fellow trade show exhibitors and prospective clients. Many companies choose to offer gift bags at trade shows and may include a lanyard with additional promotional products attached to them.
School Fundraisers – unlike business promotional efforts which strongly rely on the skills of the salesman and the quality of the product being promoted, with school fundraisers, you already have an advantage. Your prospective customers aren’t just anybody afterall, they’re either parents of children who attend the school you’re fundraising for or close relatives, in which case you have a little thing called pride and sentimentality on your side. People directly associated with the school will have a natural inclination to help in any way they can and providing well designed, custom lanyards branded with the school logo will make them an instant hit with buyers.
Souvenir Shops – it’s no secret that tourists love mementos. Aside from photographs, souvenirs from landmark locations always prove popular with travellers. As a souvenir shop owner, having your store name emblazoned upon cheap and cheerful items such as custom lanyards along with the geographic location, is a sure-fire way of guaranteeing significant interest. Remember, lanyards aren’t just some flimsy, throwaway item that will find itself on the dust pile within a month’s time, they’re a highly useful accessory that has a variety of everyday uses.
Sporting Events – custom lanyards are commonly used at sporting events and are worn by personnel for both ID purposes and as an indicator of that person’s team allegiance alike. Similar to school fundraisers, pride plays an important role in influencing a person’s decision to buy. Anyone affiliated with a particular team will possess a strong willingness to buy the lanyard or other promotional items.
Non-Commercial Uses for Lanyards
In addition to company branding efforts, lanyards are an essential and ever-present means of identification at all major facilities and work environments. With their distinct colours and ability to have occupation-specific items to attached to them, they’re a vital tool for many disciplines, with their uses extending far beyond mere staff identification. Lanyards are commonly used in the following areas:
Hospitals – lanyards are used in hospitals throughout the world for the purposes of identification and other important items such as keys, digital access cards and so on, all of which can be readily attached to the lanyard. Rather than using generic neck lanyards however, hospital personnel will often use what is known as retractables, which provides all the usual benefits of a regular lanyard but with the added feature of having the ID card or other items close to the person’s chest or belt, ensuring that they don’t come in contact with liquid substances common to a hospital environment.
Factories – when working in high risk environments that involve the operation of dangerous machinery such as those capable of slicing, cutting or working in areas that involve close contact with extreme temperatures or hazardous materials, workers will often have kill switches attached to their lanyards in the event of accident to prevent further harm. Depending on the circumstance, the lanyard may be attached to the wrist (produced at a shorter length accordingly), rather than worn around the neck or it may be a retractable badge reel, as used in hospitals.
Military Facilities – along with hospitals, military sites have the most stringent policies when it comes to staff identification. In addition to ID purposes and security access cards, specially designed lanyards are used for attaching various equipment and side arms, such as pistols, knives and other military armaments to ensure that they are never displaced during battle.
Designing Your Custom Lanyards
When designing a custom lanyard for your business that is going to be used for promotional purposes, there are a number of key considerations that must be taken into account, such as:
- Colour – in some cases, this will already be defined. Your company may have a distinct color to which it is already synonymous with, so you will naturally want to use this as your lanyard colour. In an age of full colour lanyards where this is no restriction on the amount of detail that can be infused into the material, businesses have the opportunity to create some truly spectacular designs. Colour plays an important role in the effectiveness of your branded lanyard, so it’s crucial to have colours that compliment each other well.
- Style – lanyards come in a range of different styles, including plain, pre-printed and custom-printed. The style of has a bearing on overall cost. While custom-printed lanyards are a more expensive option over cheaper alternatives, they are totally customisable and provide a far superior end product, resulting in a more effective marketing tool for your business.
- Material – there’s a wide variety of lanyard materials with the most common being bootlace, polyester, nylon and woven. Material prices vary, with bootlace being the cheapest and nylon the most expensive. As with style however, the pricier options result in a far more impressive product than cheaper solutions.
To assist you with the design of your lanyard, all reputable promotional product suppliers are typically only too happy to send you a sample for a given custom style. Once you have finalised your design with them, they will generally also send you a digital copy to ensure that it meets your exact expectations.
The Final Word
Unlike other branded items, a lanyard isn’t just another trinket with your company name splashed on it. It’s a multipurpose tool that serves a different function for different people. For a tradeshow company rep, it’s a means of identification, for an attendee, it’s an enduring reminder of that exact company. For a tourist visiting a gift shop, it’s a timeless memento, for the store owner, a reliable source of income. In addition to commercial applications, lanyards are an indispensable accessory at many major facilities and institutions including hospitals, universities, military sites and factories. Versatile and practical, there are so many ways to easily customise a lanyard to suit your exact needs and application, making them a sensible investment and powerful addition to your marketing efforts.
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