How to Choose A Corporate Gift

Gifts from marketing to customers are a traditional form of marketing. They are any product imprinted with the brand logo or promotional message. Their purpose is to make your customers more inclined to buy from you in the future.  The central idea is to promote the brand or product with a message and connect with the target audience. 

The short listing of the gifts starts with the budget, audience, actual usage. Connect and practicability of distributing the gift item are also essential. 

1. Budget

Budget helps you decide the price gifts and total quantity.  For a vast market mass coverage is important. You may go with low ticket gifts with higher quantity to get better coverage.  There are two important ways to define your budget. For newly launched products budget is as per the amount available. You can also earmark it to invest to enter or crack the market. For regular selling products, the budget is a percentage of the selling price. This helps in increasing the market share of the branded products. Here you reinvest part of the marketing budget for enhancing trials. It helps to increase the regular base of your existing customers.  You may also leverage the marketing budget through higher perceived value of the promotional products instead of direct cash discounts. Not offering cash discounts helps in keeping the positioning and value of your product/ services.

2.  Target Audience

Target audience is the next most important parameter. They are the people you are trying to influence or attract through your gift offerings. The age bracket and profiling helps you identify the best promo product as per your budget. The promotional gift should be able to excite and attract them. It should be to such an extent that they consider buying your product/ service and end up trying the same. After consuming they may like your products over their existing regular ones and switch to your brand. This can happen depending on their experience with the product. It can allow them to know your brand by name. The formula working here is  “T + A = U” which is defined as ‘trial’ leads to ‘acceptance’ which leads to ‘usage’.

3. Brand And Product Connection

Connect between the brand and the gift is important. This helps your audience to be able to recall your brand and product together. Avoid selecting gift products which fail to connect with your branded product. There may be times when you like a product but should resist using it before establishing a good connect.  For example, Deepika Padukone using parachute coconut oil with a head massager as a promotional product is a very good connect. Discuss with your regular promotional gifts company about your branded products. Ask them to suggest products that provide the best mileage and more bang for your bucks. Your mandate is to find such promotional partners. Let your audit and finance worry about the best quotes once you shortlist the product(s).

4.  Practicability of Distribution - 

 Make sure the promo products reach your audience in the best possible manner. This ensures they appreciate your efforts and you achieve your pre-defined goal. For example one of our clients (in the telecom industry) distributed chocolate boxes to all their migrated (lost) customers with the message” We missed You!”. The slim long box contained the 10 digit phone number of the recipient. Our courier partner delivered over a thousand boxes at Delhi on behalf of our telecom client. A few years earlier at Kolkata we distributed the same concept to all their loyal customers. This was on the occasion of completing many years with the company and it was with the same telecom Company.

In Conclusion, various factors come into play in shortlisting promo products. The above criterias help in selecting the best product out of many available in the market. By implementing them, you can achieve reach and authority of your brand in the eyes of your customers.