When it comes to weaselling your way into a customer's mind, the best thing to do is to make sure your brand is in their face as much as possible. When you put it somewhere hard to ignore, there's a greater chance of the customer remembering your company the next time they need services or products such as those you offer.

One of the best ways to promote your brand in such a manner is by handing out free promotional pens to customers and potential future ones. They are incredibly cheap to make and highly effective. After all, who doesn't use a pen at least once a day during their day to day schedule at the office?

Whether it's for making notes during a call, jotting down an important e-mail address, writing the minutes during a crucial meeting or even getting the order list for the office lunch run, pens are an essential part of everyday life. So what better way to advertise than to put your brand into the very hand of your customer?

Everybody appreciates a freebie, and even something as simple as a pen is at the top of the list of effective gifts received by companies. While they may not be terrifically exciting, they're undeniably useful and your customer or potential client is far more likely to carry it around with them rather than a branded toy or other item that, while cutesy or amusing, is ultimately worthless. People like receiving things with practical worth, which is what makes branded pens such an excellent choice of advertising. And that's before you even get to how using the pen will imprint your brand on the customer's mind.

Giving out promotional pens is advertising at its most unobtrusive, which people also appreciate. Nobody likes having brand names shoved in their faces, which is why the disguise of a practical and useful object is the perfect way to advertise your brand without it being annoying or overly-flagrant. Even if your potential customer simply leaves their pen on their desk most of the time, the natural behaviour of the eye is to read - so if they glance over it, they're still taking in the information you want them to take in.

So if you're trying to work out just how to promote your brand with minimal effort and the smallest chance possible of annoying or scaring off potential customers, going for cost-effective promotional pens could be the best option. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword, and with the use of promotional pens you could find your brand name soon writing its way into your customers' minds.