Advertising gifts are one today’s key marketing tools when it comes to building brand identity and developing a strong brand strategy. Essentially gifts like promotional pens and promotional mugs are mini desktop advertisements for your company. What Corporate Gifts need to have is synergy with your wide marketing campaign to ensure that they build and add towards your overall brand objectives.

How is this achieved and what decisions lead to the selection of the right Corporate gifts? As with any marketing we must start with the target audience. Corporate gifts are often given to a wide range of stakeholders within a company: existing and new clients, prospects, employees and suppliers.

Profiling the target audience is the first step and part of this should take into consideration place of use. Next to consider is the wider marketing campaign and branding message. Corporate gifts should be chosen which tie into the marketing campaign in terms of use, functions, colours and message – both inferred and implied. Promotional pens and promotional mugs are two of the most widely used corporate gifts and their effectiveness is very much governed by the above.

Market research is therefore an essential and sometimes overlooked aspect when it comes to selecting corporate gifts. Organisations with regular client and market contact are in a strong position to gather market intelligence. Online resources can also be used such as websites and news feeds. See what your clients are promoting, what’s affecting their industry and what’s important to them from a marketing view.

Testing is another important aspect. Rather than spend an entire corporate gifts budget on a large quantity of items, purchase a smaller sample and test them with your clients and stakeholders. Gather feedback and find a formula that works, and make small incremental changes to your campaign.

Successful corporate gift campaigns have some essential elements: the right corporate gift to the right target audience with the right message – and the right time. Corporate gifts are a great marketing tool but one that has to be used as strategically as any other within the marketing mix.