How To Use the Free Gift in Marketing

The rise of free gifting and corporate freebies is ongoing, yet many businesses partake in this practice and see no benefits. Here are a few tips on how your business can use the free gift and ensure that you can reap the benefits and understand these benefits for your specific business.

You must understand the pros and cons of free gifts for customers and clients to be able to start understanding the cost benefits of the process for your business. 

The first step is to understand that as with every marketing or business decision, there will be pros and cons for providing free gifts or freebies as a means of marketing. 

Pros of the free gift

• It will provide for a great contact and touch point for you and your customers or an additional conversation at a current touch point. To give the gift, you will either need to communicate with the recipient as to address and postal or actually meet them and interact at a trade show or event.
• You can use it to get the brand out there. By using wearable or useful products that are going to be kept and used by those who have been given the gift is one of the best ways to get the brand out and about.
• Your customers enjoy getting gifts and freebies. The science of gifting clearly shows how much customers and clients enjoy receiving anything for free. If it’s a useable and useful freebie, then all the better as the recipient will feel valued, creating a sense of brand loyalty.

Cons of the free gift

• The clients and customers may come to expect the freebies. If your brand is associated with giving away samples and freebies, there is a danger that you become too well known for this process, and customers will come to expect the gift. It is no longer a surprise or something unexpected but becomes anticipated, and then if they do not get the usual gift, you’re left with an unhappy customer.
• If the freebie or gift is a company product, the customer may simply wait for the next free product, and sales may go down. It is linked to the disadvantage mentioned above, in that, why would the customers then pay for your products if they are able to get them for free?
• The costs can be prohibitive and disastrous. Before any business embarks on a marketing drive that includes freebies, corporate gifts, and customer samples, they need to do the research and calculations. The costs of this process have proven to be too big to manage for many, and if it is not well planned, it can easily spiral out of control.

Top tips for the use of free gifts

Keep your brand on it: Regardless of what you are giving out, from bottled water, custom branded hats, pens, badges, and more, or even your own products and accessories, they must all have your branding on them. If you’re going to give it out for free, then ensure that the one benefit is the fact that the company brand is being spread and shared with others. It is this spreading and sharing of the company brand that is critical for marketing.

Ensure that it’s going to be used: There is nothing worse than giving out useless freebies, the poorly made, one-use ballpoint pen, or the ‘one size fits all’ beanie that does not really. Gifts like these will detract from the business rather than build the brand. Think the gifts through and either know your clients well enough to know what they like or think seasonal. One of the greatest examples is providing a cap in summer, and anthembranding.com has some notable examples, which will prove useful, wearable, and branded products.

Track the spread: Take as much information as possible when gifting so that you can then track any purchases. Ask your new customers how they heard about your brand. If it was after seeing someone using your branded gifts, it proves that this marketing style is worth it. Gather store and then use big data to perfect and improve your marketing processes.

Don’t give away your bottom line: Ensure that the campaign is well planned and has a clear budget that you can follow and adhere to. Try to be precise when it comes to the cost-benefit, and although not every free gift will result in a sale or a customer, it is about those that do and ensuring that you can provide a customer journey worthy of the gifts.

Try to personalize the process: As you perfect the free gift and develop a committed customer base, the next logical step is to personalize the gifting process to ensure that you are giving your business customers, suppliers, and stakeholders gifts that are specific to them. This is the best way to build lifelong customers and brand loyalty.

Suppose you’re going to use the free gift for customers, clients, business partners, and stakeholders. In that case, you need to ensure that you follow the tips noted above, as they have been proven to assist in building the brand and developing real customer consumer loyalty. The free gift has always been a great marketing tool; however, you must be able to distinguish between simple branded marketing merchandise, such as the pens and toys with the more useful gifts that are able to introduce the customer to your products or specific corporate gifts that serve to build the brand with excellence and professionalism.