It’s getting to be that time of year.
You just received a nicely wrapped package at your office. You look at the return address and it’s from a vendor with which you have done a lot of business. A smile comes over your face.
You open it up and find a package of fruit and nuts with a note that came from a computer or maybe in that package is a baseball cap or T-shirt with the company’s logo on it. If you are really “lucky,” you just received a mouse pad.
This is exactly what happened to Ken Kornbluh of Chicago-based MarketingPilot when he got a box of pork sausages from a vendor where he did $500,000 of business every year. Did the vendor even consider that not everyone eats pork or meat?
Kornbluh also remembers when he received a pale-blue “100-percent polyester” fuzzy blanket for the birth of his second daughter with the vendor’s logo emblazoned across in six-inch-high letters. This may be a good reminder of the vendor for a client like him but Kornbluh didn’t really want to think about the company when he was putting his child to bed.
The business of giving promotional items with logos is huge in the U.S. The National Business Association has approximately 3,500 different manufacturers that offer approximately 500,000 different items that can be promoted to clients.
According to a Baylor University study, businesses typically use these specialty advertising items to win goodwill, create awareness of new products, generate interest at trade shows, reward employees, get business appointments and retain customers.
Do these types of business promotional gifts help in establishing or maintaining relationships? How many T-shirts does one person need? Don’t we all have enough sleep or workout wear? My dad jokes that his entire wardrobe from caps to jackets is “sponsored” by some company. Are we just wasting our marketing money?
John Fox at Downers Grove, Ill.-based Venture Marketing suggests three guidelines when considering sending promotional items to your clients:
- Items should reinforce a message or theme from your company. Have a reason for sending a particular item that ties back to your business.
- Don’t cause confusion in the value of your service by giving cheap items. For example, if you sell high-end consulting services, you may not want to send a box of nuts.
- Use an item that has longevity. What will the client use and see for a long time to constantly remind them of you? In this case, popular fruit baskets may not be the ideal gift.
We also need to ensure that these kinds of gifts do not go so far in influencing customer decisions. Can sending mouse pads and T-shirts lead to giving tickets to baseball games and then all-expense-paid vacation packages? When do they reinforce your relationship and when do they “bribe” people to do more business with you?
I have seen this happen. The gifts become “enforcers” instead of “reinforcers.” This can be a dangerous business line we may be forced to walk.
What are some examples of the best items for maintaining and building a relationship? Angali Gurnani of Lisle, Ill.-based Lisle Technology Partners suggests gifts such as books that can demonstrate “your insight, shared point of view or express your ability to understand a particular business issue.”
My personal favorite is a keyboard calendar for your computer that can be placed right above the function keys. I have had these calendar rulers for almost a year reminding me of the company every single time I sit down at my computer.
Overall, remember that these types of promotional items can only be part of the equation. As Kornbluh says: “Don’t fool yourself. A fruit basket doesn’t equal a relationship.”
If you want to build real relationships that last over time, do it the old-fashioned way. Find out what problem your client has and do a good job solving it consistently. This shows that you care about them as a customer. When you’re done, send them a “nice to be doing business with you” note.
Of course, it may not hurt to stuff in the envelope a sleeve of golf balls with your company logo on it, too.