One excellent way to use advertising business gifts is as loyalty reward for your existing customers. That’s right – your existing customers. Up to 85% of your business does not come from new customers, but most businesses put the bulk of their advertising budget into wooing new customers. The problem with this is that your existing customers get neglected – and customers who feel neglected don’t stay customers for long. The solution is to make your customers feel appreciated, and the best way to do that is with a little gift now and then.

Choosing effective advertising business gifts takes just a little planning. After all, you don’t want to send just anything to your best customers. There are a few keys to using advertising business gifts as effective loyalty rewards.

1. Choose items that your customers will find useful. The more useful the gift is, the more likely it is that they will use them. The more that they use them, the more often they see your name. The most common advertising business gifts are items that everyone uses and needs – key rings, sticky notepads and the like.
2. Choose advertising business gifts with a high perceived value. That doesn’t mean choosing expensive items – many promotional items are actually quite inexpensive, but have a high perceived value. Items like calculators, cameras and personal planners have a high perceived value, but can cost very little.
3. Choose items that fit your company image, or that fit in with a current marketing campaign. For instance, a bank might normally opt for giveaways that have to do with money – money boxes, promotional wallets or the like. But if that bank were running an ad campaign with the slogan “Have a Little Fun with Your Savings” they might give away imprinted yo-yos or boomerangs to each existing customer who makes a passbook deposit of at least £10 during a specified period.
4. Plan out your advertising business gift giving in advance. Appreciation gift giving can be a one time thing, but it works best when it is part of a coordinated programme. Plan on thank you gifts for orders, for referrals or gifts for other occasions. One popular use for advertising business gifts is to send one out on customers’ birthdays. It requires a little bit of planning and setup to manage, but the results are more than worth the effort. The promotional gifts may even be only part of the birthday bonus. One family restaurant offers a free meal to the birthday boy or girl up to age 12. Rather than sending out a traditional postal card, they send out a deflated balloon imprinted with Happy Birthday! and the business name. When the child – and his or her parents – bring the balloon in to the restaurant, it serves both as “coupon” to redeem the free meal, and an extra gift – once it’s inflated from the helium tank they keep handy for the purpose.

Desktop items are among the best and most popular promotional advertising gifts for a very simple reason. Business people spend most of their time at their desk, which means that they see your gift – with your name on it – often. When it comes time to order the products or services that you sell, they’re most likely to call the name that they see all day long.