by Ryan J
Bell
http://www.promotions-guide.com
© 2007
When choosing a promotional gift, you need
to consider three things to determine what type of gift you should be giving:
your audience, your budget and your company’s image.
Identifying
Your Audience
Nobody knows your audience better than you (ideally!). But before
ordering and sending promotional gifts, you need to determine who you will be
approaching, and what you want from them. In the case of prospects or potential
clients, you are probably trying to start a conversation, so a smaller gift like
a pen or calendar will keep your name in front of them.
You
also need to consider demographic factors. If you are a software company with
suites designed for non-technical users (recipe software, quilting software, etc.)
then sending a jump-drive or blue-tooth headset won’t create a good image
of your company. But an embroidered pot-holder or iron-on patch surely would.
Setting Your Budget
How is it that Google can afford
to send branded digital picture frames, lava lamps and computer-mice to people
who are already customers? Because they know that their customers will tell others
that they got a great gift for spend x-thousands of dollars this year, and those
personal recommendations will bring in thousands of dollars of new business in
the coming year.
It is an important consideration after
you have determined who your audience is to find out what their value will be
to you if they take your desired action. What will be the profit if a prospect
who receives a pen from you opens an account with your company? How about if you
sent them a desk clock? What is it worth for bloggers in the industry to write
about you? Would they be more likely to write about a pen or a thumbdrive? It
is important to consider return on investment when you evaluate price, not just
absolute cost.
Projecting Your Company’s Image
If your mission statement is to eliminate the hassle of utility bills by allowing
customers to pay them online, then the last thing you’d want to send them
is a checkbook holder (unless you get very creative with your marketing!).
Your
promotional products need to project the kind of image you want for your company.
If you want people to think you are cutting-edge, send your best clients and digital-picture
frame with your logo. If you want prospects to see your company as reliable, send
them a customized calendar with advertising campaigns from your early days as
the images.
When you consider these factors in your purchasing
decision and add in a little creativity, you will find that your promotional products
exceed the traditional (read: boring) pen and calendar sets, and turn into something
people will talk about.
