Using Promotional Gifts Effectively

by: Gareth
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Word Count: 518

You've heard that promotional gifts are all the rage, and now you want to work them into your own advertising plan. You have a budget all set and you're ready to go – so find out why you need to take a step back and look over your promotional item plans.

First off, you need to consider what demographic you are going to be targeting. You can't just throw your promotional products in the wind and hope for the sales and leads to come in. This, just like any other marketing effort, needs to be planned out to a T. You will also need to have an effective system for tracking the results of your promotional gifts. You can do this via special phone numbers, email addresses, and websites for each aspect of your promotional gifts program.

Now, back to considering your target market. Is this B2B or B2C? B2C is the easiest since most customers are rather thrilled at any type of freebie. Keep it practical if you can, or work some sort of direct tie in to your company. Make them want to remember your company in a good light with their promo item. If B2B, are the promotional gifts going inside of your company as employee incentives, corporate gifts, or business gifts? Are you rewarding loyal vendors for their business with you?

B2B promotional gifts require a lot more thought, but you should have plenty of information on your target market so these can be even more effective than your B2C promotions. You will also need to consider certain hidden costs associated with promotional gifts. If you cannot give them all away, you will have to pay to get them stored or taken care of. Also, shipping the items themselves can have a substantial cost. Make sure that you are considering everything in your plan.

Now you will want to plan on how to give your promotional gifts away. For your B2B clients, you can hit up trade shows, send them directly, or give them in person. For B2C, you have many options as well. You can give away freebies in exchange for surveys, go to consumer shows and court potential customers, or attend local events and become involved in the community.

You might be worried after your promotional gifts get out into the wild. How is your brand doing, are people getting positive associations with your company, is this just a waste of time? Take a deep breath and relax – if you have planned everything out, you will have many methods in place to track the effectiveness of your promotional gifts. Your marketing department will be able to go over the results to see what worked, what flopped, and what could use a little more refinement. You shouldn't have many flops though – everyone loves freebies, even your B2B clients, so you should see a good return on your efforts fairly quickly. Just plan smart, set clear goals, and go over every promotional plan throughly. Soon you'll be wondering what you ever did without promotional gifts to help build up your business brand and sales.

About the Author

Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet, the UK's largest online source of promotional gifts and promotional items. He has taken the UK gift market by storm by the application of modern business thinking and the latest search engine marketing techniques. For more details on promotional gifts visit www.ideasbynet.com

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