How to maximize the potential of USB drive for promotional usage?
No doubt about it, USB drives are taking the role of the major media for portable digital storage. Compared with compact discs USB drives are even more compact and the capacity can go up to 64GB even a dual-layer Blu-ray is put to shame. Giving out a USB drive as a promotional item has many advantages over other gift items. For one thing, you know the recipient will keep it and use it.
Before making your decision in purchasing USB thumb drives for promotional purposes, there are a few factors you may want to consider carefully.
Capacity
To encourage people to keep your USB drive you need to have a decent capacity. What’s the point of keeping a USB drive that has only 512MB or less? Don’t forget that nowadays a one-hour video can occupy a couple of gigabytes easily and if your USB drive capacity is too low people will tend to set it aside. 4GB or more is the norm nowadays.
One physical drive, two logical drives
When people chain your USB to their key chain or just put it into their pocket, whatever you print on the USB drive will eventually go away because of friction; especially when the logo and text are printed on metal. There is no silkscreen ink that will stick forever. If you want to retain the identity of your USB drive, what else can be better than storing the information about you or your company on the USB drive itself? A link to redirect to your website, some product catalogs in PDF, for example.
But what if the user erases such information? Well, you can configure your USB drive in such a way that it cannot erase the information you put in. For instance, you can create two partitions with two logical drives; one with your content on it, and it is read-only and unerasable while leaving the other totally writable. That way every time when the users plug the USB drive into their computers they will see two drives as shown in the diagram below.
Before USB is plugged in
After USB is plugged in
Buy from a reliable supplier
USB price has a big range depending on the capacity and source. You can get quotes from $3 to $8 for a 4GB USB drive. Why such a big gap? There are many reasons but let’s just touch on a couple of them here. The one selling you at $3 is probably cheating you with either reclaimed chips that have been rejected by the chip manufacturer or overstating the capacity by altering the capacity using special software. The one selling you at $8 is too greedy or just wants you to pay for the golf game he has had with you. But paying $8 doesn’t automatically shield you from being cheated with sub-quality USBs. My point is: find one that you can trust and ask for a reference. Raise technical questions and if the salesperson can only hem and haw around then you should try to avoid such companies.
New Cyberian
New Cyberian has been selling USB drives since 2006. Our engineers are savvy chip designers and they know USB from the ground up. If you need reliable USB drives contact us and we will be glad to provide references to you. Companies that have bought USB drives from us include: The United Nations, UC Berkeley, US Government Printing Office, the State of California, and some Fortune 500 companies.