We're often asked by clients to supply them with something cheap to hand out to everyone that walks by at a trade show or event. This is a classic example of a GIVEAWAY and the results are often difficult to measure.

By running a well targeted PROMOTION, you could offer something of value to those who first fill out a short need-assessment or questionnaire providing you with their name, contact information and an idea of their interest level or purchasing time frame.
This is how you qualify your prospects and obtain meaningful, actionable data. And because you're not giving something to everybody, you can afford to offer a promotional product that costs a bit more and will give your prospect a reason to remember you.

Cheap giveaways have their place when donating to goody bags or as prizes for contests or thank-you gifts. However, when your goal is to promote your business, secure qualified leads or increase traffic then an effective promotion will always beat a cheap giveaway that has no call to action.

Remember it's not what you spend that's important, but what the promotion is designed to do. You can spend 50c on a pen branded with a message that says something like "visit our website and enter our competition by quoting this 4 digit code" which can then be measured.

The trick is that for the promotion to work, the prospect needs to do something for you to track. Visit your website, call for a quote, test drive a car, enter a competition, buy a product in order to get the free gift, you get the idea.

There are thousands of promotional products to choose from, and sometimes finding the right one can be tricky. You want to ask where the clients will be when they are most in need of your product and services.

If you offer a pizza delivery service, then a fridge magnet or magnetic notebook would be a good idea as your clients are likely to be in the kitchen, looking inside an empty fridge for something to eat when they decide to call you.

If you’re an electrician then a glow in the dark sticker on the fuse box would be handy for someone whose power is off.

During a recession many businesses cut back their marketing which is good news for you!  As your competition is slowing down and cutting back, it will cost you far less money to take a piece of their market share. Those customers who start buying your products or services during the downturn will see you as the dominant player in the market place while your competition loses that opportunity when the economy recovers.