Reaching out to Your Customers with Corporate Gifts

Reaching out to a company’s loyal and regular customers with corporate gifts is a relatively old and effective marketing tool. It is a token of appreciation and a gesture of goodwill. Corporate gifts are small items like coffee mugs, framed posters, bags etc.

These are gifted to your frequent customer and mostly carry a company emblem by which they were gifted. It is still very much advised though that companies always make their presence felt because if they don’t, some competitor might enter and just by making sure their presence is felt, one day take a major share of the business. A simple example in this regard can be of framed posters for walls.

 

There are a lot of companies that gift framed posters to their customers and most of these carry some sort of a company logo on them. By doing so, these companies ensure that their presence is felt in your office the year round.

 Now here is another hypothetical situation, what if a particular company which previously did gift these items tries to cut in on it this year and a competitor does gift them. Even if your customer stays and continues doing business with you, they would still have a negative feeling about this action of the aforementioned company.

 

 

This is the case if the gifts have nominal value and that none of the parties have vested interest and just want to say thank you. What if there is something deep which is to be achieved with these gifts, there are a lot of companies out there these days that are putting a ban on receiving gifts from customers or suppliers. They believe that by gifting items, the other party may try to exert undue influence. What a company and its employees need to consider for a gift to qualify as ethical is the answer to the following questions, 1) Would they be able to do their work fairly after receiving the gift? 2) How will the shareholders, directors and other interested perceive this activity as? This is a very basic tool for gauging this.
 

First of all look at your company policy, they may prescribe a price limit or lay other limit on a particular gift and would not allow the receiving or giving of a gift items over that value. Secondly ask from yourself if there may arise a conflict of interest after this or imagine how this would feel if somebody discussed this in front of you. Whatever the circumstances may be, cash gifts are strictly unacceptable. These are some guidelines with the help of which you can stay clear of trouble.
Corporate gifts serve a very important purpose and help cement business relations but they should not be misused in any shape or form.