Time for Twelve Reasons to use Business Gifts made in Lancashire
Do you want your Lancashire business to be noticed, remembered, and stand out from the rest?
Is your business card one of many gathering dust in desk drawers across the country?
Local distributors BusinessGiftUK.com know how to get your company seen and remembered. Here are a dozen reasons why you should be using locally made promotional business gifts to enhance your business.
1 – Build Your Local Brand
Your brand and its market position must be regularly reviewed and promoted in a straight forward and consistent manner. This does not necessarily need to involve costly marketing campaigns. Good customer service and the long term use of promotional gifts can create effective brand recognition. Regular contact with clients and giving customised, useful products builds brand recognition with your clients. They have a constant reminder of your logo. Using locally manufactured, eco-friendly gifts gives relevance and supplies repeat exposure of who you are and what you can offer. What’s more, your contact details are extremely easy to find. There is more chance of a spontaneous call, if they don’t have to go digging in that drawer full of old business cards. Imagine one of the World's best selling mouse mats, made in Blackpool, sat next to your customers' computers, with brand and contact details in full view.
2 – Incentives To Buy
Promotional gifts can be used blatantly to entice people to buy. This is particularly effective in retail point of sale activity, as on pack branded gifts. They are also used in less “sexy” areas, such as insurance and banking, where customers are often offered quality pens as they fill in forms. Historically, it has been proven that the offer of a good free pen can significantly increase the number of quote requests or responses. Imagine selling water coolers into offices. Incentivise both the appointment and the sale. Offer a UK made H20 Eco bottle, made from 100% recycled Prevented Ocean Plastic, 100% recyclable, made in Lancashire in a nil-to-landfill factory to everyone who sees you. Even if you do not get the order you have made a great impression and left a relevant, lasting reminder. To secure an order, offer a bottle for each member of staff when they sign up. Ethical, eco-friendly, effective promotion.
3 – Get Customers’ Attention
Let’s be honest – we all love to get value for money, but it is even better to get something for free. It’s also good for the soul to be a giver, so using promotional gifts creates an all-round feeling of bonhomie This should not be underestimated in forging new business relationships. When interacting with total strangers, maybe at Expos and Trade Shows, the goodwill of offering promotional gifts is a great ice breaker, starts a conversation and makes a memorable first impression. Have you seen staff at exhibitions, stood on stands, watching delegates pass by? A low cost, easy to handle gift could be handed out in the isles, by your team, who then have a moment to start a conversation.
4 – Good Staff Incentives
Within the workplace promotional gifts can be used to incentivise and motivate staff. This can be done in different ways. Firstly, gifts can be used for targeted incentives or rewards for effort. Secondly, they can be used to create team spirit. They create a sense of belonging to the group and company pride from using quality branded clothing, desk items and corporate stationery. Recognition leads to a sense of fulfilment, inspires company loyalty and creates a workforce that feels appreciated. You can instill pride, loyalty and respect in your team by being seen to buy local, ethically manufactured gifts and incentives.
5 – Minimum Waste, Targeted Marketing
When you have a stock of promotional merchandise you choose who to give or send it to. When your marketing is highly targeted like this it can become much more cost effective. It’s a highly efficient way of making a good first impression, which makes an emotional connection with your target. Emotions like desire and gratitude plant memories in the brain. If you are marketing to local people, show your own local credentials by offering locally made gifts.
6 – Long Life Advertising
UK manufactured, quality promotional gifts have a much longer life span than other media and marketing formats. Your investment in a targeted, relevant, useful product for your client can see your message positioned on their desk, or in their pocket, for many years. I loved seeing a LinkedIn post recently, from Rachel Gill of Cheetham Jackson Mortgages, Preston, about how she was still using a Lancashire made ruler that I gave her 10 years ago. Gifts appreciated like that have a great chance of being to hand when a buying need arises. Don't forget the power of repeat exposure too. Seeing your brand repeatedly over many months gives you a much greater chance of a click or a contact when a need arises.
7 – Repeat Business
It is not only new clients that appreciate a good promotional gift. As a high percentage of business comes from existing customers so giving them thank you gifts is a wise investment. In many industries purchases can be infrequent. It is not everyday you need asset finance, replacement machinery or a new heating system. Giving a gift keeps you in touch with infrequent buyers and gives you a great chance for a catch up. If your product or service uses keys, then adding UK made, Ad Loop keyrings to every bunch of keys you handle will get subsequent service work, repairs and call outs.
8 – Referrals
At a one-to-one or Zoom networking meeting, you are asking for referrals. Busy people are quickly on to the next meeting or contact. Leaving them with a hand full of your gifts, to pass on to other people, both expands your circle of influence and helps them to remember more about you. Remember to also give a gift to say thank you when you receive a referral, then they are more likely to do it again. Try giving a handful of locally made Brite-Mat coasters, rather than business cards. Be different, be professional and memorable.
9 – How do you Get Recommendations
A promotional gift can act as a wonderful prompt for a happy client to recommend you to their friends and associates. Your contact details are readily available to be passed on. Make sure they are printed on the gift. After a sale, check a client is completely satisfied. Give them a relevant thank you gift and ask them to keep it. It is a reminder to pass on your details to other people that you could help. Imagine someone talking over the garden fence about their new shed you have supplied for them. If the key is on your keyring then your details are at hand to pass on straight away. A little effort and your next contact could be primed to buy by a happy customer.
10 – How do you Get Reviews
As well as asking for recommendations and referrals, business gifts can also help you ask for those all-important online reviews. Check that your client is happy, hand over a gift and ask if they would be kind enough to leave a review. You can brand a gift with a simple message: “Any questions please give us a call. Happy? Please leave us a review at….”
11 – How do you Buy Time
Whenever a gift is given and received there is an opportunity to talk and network. Everyone pauses to receive a gift, and in most cases simple politeness stops people from simply walking away. This is your chance to say a little about what you do and then listen carefully to what they do, triggering your radar for opportunities. Conversation is made much easier when offering a relevant promotional gift. This method works with all types of encounters, not just formal networking events. “Has anyone got a pen….?” Have a branded one ready to hand over and start a conversation.
12 –How do you add a Catalyst for all of your marketing
Using customised gifts to promote your business is a fantastic way of maximising your marketing mix. Gifts are the catalyst to all other activity. Well targeted, relevant, advertising promotional gifts enhance and support the message you want to convey through all other marketing channels. They are the attention getters. They are the emotive connection. They are there for the long haul. Business gifts are also an effective way of bypassing the competition on Google by keeping it simple and direct. When LoopKeyrings.co.uk wanted to announce a free UK delivery service in 2012, they mailed truck shaped rulers to every client. The tangible message saw an immediate increase in repeat orders. Some of those rulers are still on clients desks today.
Talk to an established local distributer like BusinessGiftUK.com of Leyland. They can give you advice about effective use of promotional business gifts. They have worked with businesses of all sizes, locally, nationally and internationally since they were established in 1985.
Author: Stephen Ward is Managing Director of Ad-Options Ltd t/as BusinessGiftUK.com. He is also former Chair of the Central Lancashire Business Club and an Accredited Member of the British Promotional Merchandise Association (BPMA).
Tel: 01772 429111
Email: steve@businessgiftuk.com
