Small Businesses Need to Promote Themselves - Promotional Gifts Are the Cost Affective Promoter

It goes without saying that in order to succeed in business you need to promote yourself. This can be done in a number of ways, some free and some quite expensive. Promotional gifts can be purchased to promote your small business regardless of your budget. Following is a list of five things you should consider before jumping into any bulk purchase.

Who Are your customers? Are you aiming to get thousands of people to purchase your products or service or are you targeting fifty businesses who you believe will benefit from what you have to offer? If you are trying to attract thousands, an inexpensive plastic pen or keyfob could do the job. If, on the other hand, you are trying to impress fifty market leaders in your field you will probably want to look at higher quality, more expensive gifts that can be purchased in much smaller quantities.

What is you budget? Whatever your budget, you should be able to stay well within it. Looking at promotional gifts catalogue or websites can be a bit daunting if you are not used to doing it. A good promotional gifts supplier should be able to find products for you that are within your budget or tell you if your preferred spend is out of the question and then offer you suggestions.

What products will your customers use? As a small business owner, you will most likely not have the same budget as your larger competitors. It is therefore a lot more important to get the most out of your marketing budget. Look for gifts that your target customers will use. There are many industry specific gifts and some may be right for you. A plumbers merchant, for example could purchase printed carpenter pencils or tape measures for his customers, a cooking school could purchase top quality knives, pans or decorative table features. Get the idea? If you are not targeting one individual industry, try using gifts that everyone needs and uses daily such as promotional pens, mugs and mouse mats. Remember business gifts that are used are seen much more often and sell for you much better than gimmicky gifts.

How are you going to give your gifts away? The last thing you want to do is purchase 2000 breakable mugs just to realise you have no way of distributing them. This may sound obvious but it happens all the time!

How are you going to follow up your first gifts campaign? You cannot simply give away pens to thousands of people and then stop. Your pens will eventually stop working of get lost along with your details. The trick is to introduce your brand to your target customers and then reintroduce it often. We all know the term 'out of site out of mind.' Don't be out of mind for too long. If you tell your supplier that you want ideas for a follow up marketing campaign, they should be able to suggest many fun and popular gifts and they may even offer you a discount on repeat or new orders.