Argon Promotional Products and Promotional Gifts. » Promotional Gifts

You will encounter a number of occasions when corporate gifts will prove very helpful and appropriate. These are presented as a token of appreciation for outstanding executive performance, to show appreciation towards associates or clients or sometimes even to attract potential clients. These are basically used as an incentive to promote the relationship with the employees and maybe to induce better performance. These also promote your brand name.

These represent a large number of things about your company or brand. You must be very careful in selecting the quality of the chosen gift that you are going to present to the recipient. It should meet or exceed the recipient’s standards. For example giving a cheap coffee mug to a CEO of any company will hamper your company’s or brand image in the mind of that person.

The corporate gifts should not be random, instead they should reflect your business. they can be quite elaborate, there are various types of products which suit different companies or different occasions.

For top level executives these may range from cars, watches, cell phones etc. These are high end gifts and the lavishness of the gift reflects the status of the recipient or occasion.

These are generally given during award ceremonies, birthdays, holidays, or even when the company achieves its goals. Employees and clients appreciate this gesture as they feel that they are being looked after by the company.

You many think that selecting the right corporate gift is a daunting task, however it is not so. There are countless different products that you can purchase and all of them are suitable for the corporate environment. From pens to desk clocks to watches, there is a perfect gift for every corporation.

Suppose you present a gift to a client that is something that you already know he or she has an interest in, then he or she will surely be impressed by your gesture. On the other hand, if you gift him something which is not to his liking, it may backfire. Therefore it is very important to know the likes and dislikes of the recipient before presenting him a gift. Also, there must be some utility attached to the gift as the regular use of the item ensures that your logo or message is being constantly remembered.  There is no point in giving an expensive item which has no utility.

So giving corporate gifts to your client is not as difficult as it seems.  If you have dealt with your client for sometime, you must surely know about his likes and dislikes. All you have to do is spend some time in considering his taste and preferences and then make a decision relative to your findings.

Apart from making a significant amount of profit, the reason for going into business is to identify a precise need that is common to a lot of people and then satisfy it by providing products and services. After you have mastered the art of satisfying this particular need the next step is to market and advertise it to a number of individuals. This is when business gifts come in to the picture.

These are promotional items that have the company name and company logo printed on them. The purpose of this is to promote and advertise the company and the services and products it offers. These giveaways come in all different shapes and sizes, some are expensive while the rest are comparatively cheap.

Types of Gifts:
There are a number of companies and organizations that have given away numerous business gifts to its clients. As a result of this action they have inspired their target audience into buying their products without persuading them with words. There are a wide number of products that can be ordered by and fit into any goal that the company might have for itself. These types of business gifts carry a lot of weight as they are effective sources which can promote the company’s brand and message.

There are products that are not very expensive and therefore are very affordable. These take the form of pens, mugs, notepads and notebooks. There are also those which are comparatively larger and much more expensive. Some of these are televisions, laptops, laptop bags and sometimes even cars.

To Enlighten and Inform:
Giving away business gifts can be compared to talking with your customers and future customers. It is very similar to an ordinary conversation and provides the same advantages. When gifting a product you are informing the client or customer about the company, the services and products it offers and its purpose. If your chosen product has a marketing message printed on it, then you can also promote the products and services that you offer.

Gifts are also a great source of informing your target audience about the launch of a new product, or even to notify them about your existing services and products. You do not have to directly speak to them. All you have to do is hand the business gift to them and they will immediately be interested and enthused about your company.

Apart from marketing your company, it will also be a constant reminder of your company every time they use it. When they appear to be happy and content with it, they will most likely spread the word around. Business gifts have the ability to get this done.

Everyone is sure to agree that there is nothing better than free marketing. If you are one of the select few who have not used business gifts as part of your promotional campaign this is the time to begin!

Everyone likes surprises and loves receiving gifts. Over a period of time one learns with experience and necessary feedback which promotional products pack a punch. Sagging sales can be bolstered with fun giveaways. It is a sure way to win back clients and make new ones.  Quite a few companies are happily giving away Ipods, USB flash drives, camera chips and other trendy items that can help them to touch base with people who matter to them the most. Just because one company is giving away premium products and promoting themselves it does not mean that spending money is important. In today’s situation one cannot have an unlimited budget for promotions. As businesses are tumbling and the domino effect is spreading globally, the promotional activities are restricted.

Even though the recession is pinching most companies globally, showing gratitude through marketing campaigns will prove helpful. In trying times when a promotional gift reaches you it means your contribution towards the company still counts.  Even a token gesture saying the company cares speaks volumes of its commitment towards the employees. Business is slack but a small reward means so much. The recipient is bound to understand that. It is not the time to indulge in who gives the most expensive item. Even a small pen set, keyring, promotional umbrella, branded mugs or glasses are welcome. It is a good motivator to uplift the mood of clients and consumers. Spending in a small way also ensures the company will not buckle under pressure.

It is time to let everyone know business is open and quiet promotions in small ceremonies are suitable. This makes the struggle more bearable. Some promotional products that do not pinch the company and come within budget include t-shirts, medium sized bags, bottles, flasks, elegant pen holders, photo frames, vases, ceramic sculptures, multi-purpose conference folders and mouse pads. A company can also give a combination of two different gifts. The design can be such that it accommodates the logo and some message perfectly. During times when it is tough to keep business going, association with simple charities is also useful. Since most charities have non-profit products that can be used for promotional purposes, it is an ideal way not to hurt the reserve funds. It makes the company visible not only business wise but also gives a touch of philanthropy.

There are different types of business gifts for a wide spectrum of purposes. In this case, they are mainly used for promotions. In order to know which the best items are for such a purpose, you need to carefully plan what items to distribute and to whom you should give these gifts. You can start by setting your objective in order to make your efforts comprehensive and effective. For this intention, your objective is quite clear, it is to maximize the promotional opportunities for your company image. You can also opt for promoting your specific product brands through these products. With this objective, you can set specific goals for your business gifts.

One goal you need to establish is the increased or maximized utility of these business gifts. You know that the more a product is being used by a person, the more it is being exposed to its user. If this gift can also be used outdoors, then the general public is bound to have a glimpse of your company brand or logo printed on the item every time it is being used. This implies that you can choose items that fall into these categories in order to achieve these good results. Another goal that you can set is to aim for sturdier business gifts that can be used for a long time. Longevity is another key to extend the exposure of your logos or brands. This aspect actually works hand-in-hand with increased utility in order to maximize the benefits of these promotional tools. Lastly, longevity is a key to fully justify the costs of producing these items.

Of course, you also need to employ a set of criteria in choosing the perfect items based on these goals. In order to maximize utility, choose items that are functional and practical. If they are being used everyday, then the chances by which your logo or brands are exposed are great. You also need to use sturdier items in order to ensure longevity. Lastly, you can offer unique business gifts that can totally differentiate your company from the rest, who are likewise using promotional tools.

If you have carefully considered the aspects discussed above, you will be able to maximize the benefits of these gifts. One benefit is that you get to accomplish your main objective, which is to maximize the promotions of your company or specific brands because you have ensured their exposure to an optimum level. Another benefit is that you are able to create a positive image because you have made the recipients happy with your gifts. Lastly, you have achieved your objective at a low cost. Compared to the traditional promotional tools, business gifts are more cost effective.

With stiff competition from every quarter, corporate houses and businesses are figuring out new marketing approaches to garner and to reach out to prospective customers. Print ads, audio visual ads and online ads definitely help businesses to promote themselves. However, a small gesture like giving out promotional gifts helps enterprises to get closer to their target audience and imprint their brand in the minds of the general public.

Brand awareness, the main aim of any advertising campaign or marketing strategy helps business ventures, big or small to be recognized by a large number of people. Promoting your company or business bluntly through advertisements will get you customers but doing it with promotional products gets you more customers. The recipients of the gifts will reciprocate your gesture by buying your products and becoming your endorsers.

Recognizing the target group of your company and marketing your products/brand/services to them helps you in amassing profits. Select promotional gifts that suit your target band. The item you distribute to the public must enhance your brand visibility and be useful too. Choose durable products that last for a longer period over the attractive and short-lived ones. Your chosen giveaways should remind your customers and the prospective ones of your brand/product.

You can give away items like promotional mugs, t-shirts, keyrings, calendars, notepads, caps, bags, fridge magnets, ice scrapers and pens, etc. Posters, leaflets and pamphlets are also distributed as gifts. Fun items like frisbees and foam hands are also used for promoting a brand. It is imperative to have your company’s logo, name, slogan and colour scheme on the body of the products.

They can be distributed to people at exhibition venues and crowded places like malls. You can enter into an understanding with the nearby radio station and give away these gifts as prizes, for trivia contests organized by the radio stations. You can sponsor community and sports events and distribute your giveaways as rewards. You can even give out these items for a fund raising event.

Dubbed as cost-effective marketing tools, these are known to suit any kind of budget. Being economical they are chosen by many companies and individuals to market their products/services along with traditional methods of marketing. The promotional gifts can range from a simple pen to Mp3 players. Irrespective of the gift you give, you are assured of greater prospects and better profits with this simple and innovative marketing move.

The human being wants attention.  Right from infancy, we clamour for attention and it seems as if only when you can get attention, will you get what you want.  It sounds something like “the crying baby gets the milk” quote that seems to keep rearing itself up again and again.

Well, is seems like brands are no different and businesses can thrive only if you can draw the attention of your customers and the general public at regular intervals.  Otherwise it looks as if the “out of sight, out of mind” quote would become true and that means kaput for business.  Getting the attention is however, easier said than done, what with the surfeit of marketing and aggressive promotions that are constantly under way from various companies like yourself and the customer having to face a deluge of campaigns, making it difficult for him to distinguish one from the other.

Promotional items have often proved effective in meeting this objective and many companies have hopped on to this bandwagon as well. The challenge in this space now, is to choose an item that can produce the best visibility for the brand and draw the attention of the maximum number of people to your brand.  Some of the time tested items like pens, mugs, and keyrings do have their strong points but suffer in terms of attracting wide attention at a single point in time and also do not allow for expansive messages due to constraint of space.  However, in terms of grabbing immediate attention of a large number of people at one time, nothing can beat the promotional umbrella.  That is because its wide canopy provides an ideal space to imprint the logo as well as essential contact information such as phone numbers as well as the website address.  This is a great advantage as your brand and important company information reaches many people at one time and you can get enquiries pretty fast from persons interested in your products.

Choosing the right promotional umbrella is a far easier task, thanks to the huge number of choices available that will complement your company logo and colours in the manner you want.  Customizing messages by imprinting them with eye catching designs relevant to your company business is also possible.  Since the space on the canopy is quite sufficient, you can experiment with different font styles, the idea being that your messages must be visible and clear from a distance.  While bright coloured promotional umbrellas always turn heads, it is the graphics on the imprints that grabs attention and that is an area you can make your own with some careful thinking and font selection.

With the global recession in full swing, marketing spends have drastically been cut and everybody is having a tough time reallocating resources for their branding campaigns.  The approach now is more on selective and focused marketing rather than a broad based random advertising campaign.  So the more expensive promotional campaigns are now being given the pass in favour of low budget, low profile advertising and promotional gifts are making their presence felt in helping a brand really stand out.

Some very good products like desk sets and other attractive corporate gifts are at hand to ensure that even your low budget campaign, when directed at the right people can pay you very good dividends.  Moreover, the perceived value of some of the products available permits them to automatically qualify as top end gifts and this is of great benefit in times like these, when the economy is slow and every penny counts.  It means that you get more for less and as far as the customer is concerned, he is also happy to receive them thanks to his enhanced perception of such items.

This perceived value of a promotional gift gets a big fillip if you can match it with the utility requirement of the recipient, meaning the customer would have anyways purchased the item if it were not gifted to him by you. You can imagine the gratitude and recollection for your brand in such a situation and this becomes a classic case of making the best use of your available resources to come out with a win-win for everybody.
Other promotional gifts include business bags and luggage and these are again perceived to be of high value, especially the branded ones.  For a corporate professional, they are always welcome and are worth pursuing.  Some other luxurious items are Waterman pens and watches and these have always been well received.  They have high price tags and can be given to only your premium customers.  In terms of perceived value, another item that comes to mind is branded golf luggage, though this is not something that is often distributed due to its specific function.  Silver plated gifts also make for excellent corporate givaways as they have an exclusive feel about them.

It is thus clear that it is not always necessary to only go for big bang advertising blasts and splurge a lot of money in the process.  Knowing the customer’s preference and adapting your purchase of promotional gifts can possibly give even better results than the traditional form of advertising.  A freeze or cut on ad spend is not therefore a bad thing after all.  It forces you to come out with out of the box ideas and use your resources in the best manner possible and if at the end of it you are successful, then you would have done your job as a responsible company employee.

It is worthwhile looking at some corporate gift options that are available on the website which you can hand over to your customers and employees who are sure to receive them with great enthusiasm and appreciation.

The first one deserving mention is the flash drive which has made the storage of data such an easy task, besides lending the convenience of portability and any time access.  These devices give you the benefit of taking a back up and are available in many colours and with varying storage capacities.  Their utility and features have made them very popular with the corporate world and are worthy gifts to be handed over.  When these types of products are distributed as corporate gifts with the company logo imprinted on them, your brand receives excellent top of mind recall every time the flash drive is used.

These types of products can be very creatively used during seminars and exhibitions. They can be distributed as giveaways to visitors at the stall and can be loaded with useful company information on products and services which visitors would definitely look at and thereby approach you for business.  These flash drives can also contain testimonials and the various projects that your company has undertaken successfully to serve as additional proofs reflecting the capabilities of your company.

Another useful product is the promotional computer gift set.  These sets, while being reasonably priced contain very useful items attractively packed.  They are ideal gifts that you can give to some of your customers who are tech savvy or to specific people in a company who are from the IT department.  They have all the right equipment and accessories that the IT guys need and they will thank you for making their jobs easier, by gifting them something which they can access quickly at one place.  It is imperative to know your customers and their tastes very well to hand over gifts of this type and can do a lot for your brand image as well as for the person handling the account.  It conveys the impression that you care about your customers and give a lot of thought to even a supposedly mundane activity like gift distribution.  These corporate gifts get noticed by many people within your customer’s office and all of them will have a very positive opinion about your company.  The best thing about these gifts is that they can also be bought in smaller quantities as per your need and you can spend your budget wisely.

It is worthwhile to pause and look at off beat options like the ones described above and select the ones you feel will be accepted gladly by the customer.  They serve as a good diversion in comparison to the other gifts and you are able to establish relationships with other equally important departments within your customer’s company.

If you want to get a business or brand off the ground at a low marketing cost, you need not look beyond promotional keyrings.  They are akin to pens in the sense that they are utility products that have the capability to reach your advertising message to many people in a short time.  These items are the best when it comes to cost effectiveness.  They have been popular promotional items because of their practical value and the fact that they are so much closer to the customer.  They can be either custom printed or laser engraved with your brand and message at a very reasonable expense, enabling even smaller enterprises to go for them as their brand ambassadors.  They are manufactured from different material like plastic, leather, metal, glass and also have multiple applications like torches, whistles, panic sprays, calculators and bottle openers attached to them.

The other positive aspect of these keyrings is the longer life span and that in itself is a very important factor behind its sustenance as a promotional item for such a long time.  Every company wants its advertising costs to give back good return and with these giveaways, their durability ensures that this requirement is well met.  These items are not only close to the customer physically, they remain in his actual vision at least 3 -5 times a day, giving your brand the visibility which is difficult with other items.

Promotional keyrings work as an excellent publicity tool for everybody irrespective of whether you are in the product or service industry.  Many companies use these for distribution at exhibitions and trade fairs to either announce their arrival or sustain their brand recall.  Some typical examples are real estate agencies, travel agencies, bookstores, home improvement agencies, car retail shops and many others.

One more promotional innovation with these useful and very popular products is the application of relevant themes engraved in the metal variety.  They are laser engraved for durability and themes can be designed so that it matches your business.  So an automotive shop can have a promotional keyring with the theme of a steering wheel and a pharmaceutical company specializing in heart related drugs could distribute them with a theme of a heart.  This renders a distinctive touch to the gift and the recipient will surely identify them from all the others very quickly.

When considering the price that a promotional keyring will cost this is surely one of the best economical brand builders you can distribute.

The simple promotional mouse mat is found in almost every office.  It is a great promotional idea and many offices are resorting to this billiant idea of gifting.  A mouse mat with the company logo is a wonderful way of marketing the company’s brand image.  The company’s emblem on the mouse mat lends a feeling of security and stability to the employees. Gifting these handy products is a totally new concept when compared to the traditional methods of advertising and marketing.  These useful products help in conveying the message of the company in a simpler manner, without being overly showy or pompous.

With computers pervading many homes and offices, there is no one single person who does not use the computer.  When there is a computer, there has to be a mouse mat.  When this is printed with the company’s logo and message, it is catchier and people are able to relate to it.  Companies can print the message in catchy and bright colours so that everyone remembers it. When the company’s name is displayed on the surface, people automatically get familiar with the brand image.  Companies can also gift these to their employees.  Employees would take pride in possessing such a mouse mat.

The main idea behind promotional advertising is that companies want to make sure that their brand image still holds fresh in the minds of the people.  Promotional items are a way to remind people of the company.    Gifting a mouse mat is a personalized way of reaching out to customers and employees and meets that objective very well.

These can also be gifted to employees either at a sales conference or during a meeting. The employees also feel grateful for having received this gift.   The company should make sure that the quality of the product is good since it would be used day in and day out.

The company has to identify what kind of people they want to attract with these products.  Depending on the audience they want to cater to, these can be customized and delivered.  The plethora of choices in terms of sizes, shapes, designs and colours have made it relatively easy for anybody to take their pick of the design and colour combination they would want and place the order. They also offer both utility and convenience.  It also works out to be cheaper when compared to other promotional items.  There can be a variety of permutations and combinations which can be explored when it comes to promotional mouse mats.