The gift that keeps on giving Dee Blick, Chartered Marketer for Kalimex, explains how promotional gifts can be used to increase sales.
I have a particular affinity with promotional gifts, having spent the last 34 years using them in campaigns to increase sales and recruit new customers. I know they work. I don’t mean simply putting jars of pens on your counter for the ‘grab and go’ brigade because you had a deal to buy thousands of them. I mean using them in a more considered manner to increase sales.
For example: if I offer something simple but appealing like an unbreakable mug filled with sweets to encourage a motor factor to order a new product, I know that its modest cost will be more than covered by the uplift in sales. If I enclose a coaster in a letter to warm prospects and invite them to visit the Kalimex stand at Automechanika, I know that if I also let folk know there will be more goodies awaiting them, we’ll be mobbed by the right people!
How to use promotional gifts to drive sales
- Define your objectives – Do you want to increase responses to your e-mail campaigns, encourage trade customers to try a new product, increase their order, buy from you on a certain day, or spend a certain amount? Be clear so you don’t waste time and money.
- Brand gifts with your contact details – but don’t overload with too much information; less is more. Your business name and website are the two key ingredients. Use the colours of your brand and your business typeface.
- Ask for samples before buying – What looks good online can be cheap as chips in reality.
- Choose gifts that are easy to transport and likely to be well received – At Kalimex we’ve rarely departed from mugs, pens, key rings, coasters and t- shirts over the years. Using the same gifts, but with different messages to reflect the products we’re promoting and the specific campaigns.
- Pop an item in a mailshot – A flat envelope is boring. A lumpy one will always be opened.
- Make them an added extra – Put them in with a decent-sized order to a valued trade customer. A mug filled with biscuits and a tea bag will put you in the good books and keep you front of mind for their next order.
Case Study
When Kalimex launched a cartoon character, Mr K-Seal, as part of a global initiative to drive sales of K-Seal Coolant Leak Repair, it knew that for the character to have impact with motor factors the company needed an array of Mr K-
Seal promotional items. The company chose a Mr K-Seal key ring, coaster, t-shirt, pen and a limited edition mug. The reaction in America and the UK to this was incredible. In the month after the first phase of the Mr K-Seal promotion K-Seal sales broke all records. Kalimex continues using promotional gifts and branded clothing for promotions to stockists and mechanics.
