Put simply, a lanyard is a long piece of cord attached to a card (usually an ID card) which is worn around your neck to identify you in a given setting, often a business setting.
Interesting fact about lanyards! The word ‘lanyard’ is derived from the French word: ‘lanière’. Used on both land and sea, lanyards were historically used to temporarily attach weapons like pistols or swords to uniforms. They were also worn on uniforms to signify rank or identity.
Today, lanyards are used in more convivial environments, but their original purpose of communicating identity still stands, and they remain especially beneficial for small and medium sized businesses. Here’s why:
They help build brand awareness
Whether your business has an established brand or not, brand building should always feature in your marketing efforts. Sure, there are oodles of ways to build your brand online but offline branding using lanyards is hugely effective too. Incorporating your logo or corporate colours into a lanyard design allows your business to be instantly recognisable to customers and prospects.
Lanyards are made using a diverse range of colours and fabrics and can be created from a number of synthetic materials including nylon and polyester, all available in contemporary, traditional, or novel designs to fully reflect what your business is all about.
Lanyards support your sales efforts
Of course, any form of marketing or advertising is aimed at supporting your sales and customer service efforts, but more specifically, lanyards help in person to person sales. As a sales person, if you are wearing a lanyard, you are offering a first and important impression to potential customers. People feel more comfortable approaching someone wearing a lanyard, as it portrays a professional image.
Similarly, if you or your employees are regularly in a customer facing situations, or attend workplace events, lanyards are a brilliant way of making yourself easily identifiable to prospects, existing customers and colleagues.
Lanyards can support team bonding tactics
We all know that team bonding is important in business but continually keeping your team motivated and providing a feeling of belonging can be challenging. Lanyards have an active, yet subtle way of helping teams achieve a sense of ‘everyone aspiring to the same goal’.
Lanyards can also help businesses with larger teams whose members don’t know each other well. Perhaps you have temporary workers or contractors who are working together on a one-off basis. If so, lanyards can create that instant ‘togetherness’ you want to signal to potential customers.
Helpfully, lanyards can also assist unfamiliar colleagues to remember names and maintain professionalism. Plus, in a conference or business networking setting, employees can find each other more easily and refer customers to one another by name.
They’re hugely convenient
Team bonding, branding and sales are key ingredients to a successful marketing strategy, but lanyards also offer huge practical advantages to businesses that want to run their operations securely, smoothly and effectively. This is how:
- Lanyards are virtually impossible to lose, so you can say goodbye to the headache of misplaced ID or key cards along with frantic rummaging in the bottom of your bag to simply get into your workplace.
- If they have been removed and become lost, lanyards by their very purpose, are easily identifiable and returnable, meaning companies don’t have to keep on buying replacements.
- For businesses that need to ensure only authorised personnel are allowed into the premises, lanyards easily identify anyone who is not an authorised member of staff, straight away alerting them to security.
- Using a lanyard to hold ID cards in means you don’t have to damage any suits or uniforms with pin holes, tags or buttons.
- The synthetic fabrics used to make lanyards protects against damage such as mildew and mould.
- As cost-effective marketing tactics go, lanyards offer a good return on investment thanks to these synthetic materials which don’t have to be replaced frequently.
- Again, in terms of cost-effectiveness, lanyards can often be procured in large quantities, often at an overall lower price.
- Lanyards make team members and employees appear instantly professional.