Business Gifts – Using Promotional Gifts To Stimulate Business Sales Activities
Business gifts are becoming a vital part of the sales process within many corporate environments. Walk into any business-to-business environment and you will quickly see a wide range of office and desktop promotional items, especially within the offices of a distribution or channel reseller.
So why are business gifts so popular? The reason is that they are used invariably to keep a brand name and contact details before a client audience. Research across the promotions industry reports that office gifts tend to be seen around five to six times a day. Within an open-plan office, they are often seen by other team members, helping to achieve a cumulative brand-building effect.
Apart from generating interest, within a corporate environment promotional gifts can also be used to stimulate sales efforts. This often requires a little more creativity and planning as the gifts move from being used as giveaways to a more strategic and targeted approach.
The most popular business-to-business promotional items tend to be volume items like promotional mugs, pens and stationery items. Most canteen cupboards will harbour a selection of supplier mugs, with desk pots sometimes awash with pens from various manufacturers.
So how what can you do to differentiate your offering? There are two approaches. The first involves opening the budget-gate and perhaps opting for something a little more creative. Instead of a standard mug choose a ‘heat and reveal’ variant. At Redbows we have had fun over the last few years with a number of designs as I am sure you can imagine. For a pen, choose something a little bit quirky or technical and a pen-type more towards the executive end of the range, which will find its way into a shirt pocket or jacket.
A real brand and business building effect however can be achieved by combing products into a gift set which can be acquired over time on a points or sales target basis. Such an approach may start with fairly low-value items whose unit-price and value rises as the barriers to acquisition do.
When used in a business or corporate environment it is also important to make the promotion current and interesting, and preferably connected to an upcoming event. Apple’s iPod offers a range of options for promotions in the form of branded speakers, sleeves and accessories, for example, because it is a current highly, in-vogue item. However, beware that the adoption curve for this is now quite advanced and your target audience may be experiencing iPod-fatigue as every supplier focuses on this technological advancement. If timing your promotion to coincide with an upcoming event, put off the final decision to the last possible moment – England and the European Championships being a case in point.
To get the right business gifts for your promotion contact our Promotional Gifts Consultants. Simply complete our quick response enquiry form, call UK 0845 8386 368 or email us.
