Promotional Corporate Gifts

In the corporate and business world, it’s more common to wine and dine potential clients or partners, take them out for a round of golf or even hit up a bar for networking over cocktails. The biggest problem with these gestures — especially regarding customers — is they can end up being quite expensive when all is said and done. Not to mention, a single experience, day or evening will not always leave a lasting impression. It can’t be shared, either.

If you take a small handful of company execs to a restaurant after an event, it’s not going to amount to much exposure for your brand.

Gifts, on the other hand, when chosen wisely, are much more meaningful, evergreen and impressionable. Even something as remarkably simple as a coffee mug with your brand or company logo on the outside will have continuous relevance. Imagine how many times that partner or customer will refill the mug to get coffee.

With a tangible gift, the exposure for your company’s brand can be virtually limitless. Their colleagues and clientele will see it at the office, and if they take it home, their family will even notice it. You could argue there are no guarantees anyone else will see the gift, but it’s certainly more likely than any of those trips or experiences you’d otherwise offer. A day at the golf course, for example, is not going to influence the family members of your guests or clients. A gift — such as a mug — has a much higher chance of doing so.

There are stats to back all this up, too. Did you know that the promotional product industry — also known as ad specialties — is worth $22.9 billion and involves nearly every business in the United States? Go ahead and whistle — it’s a doozy.

Now, given a choice, would you rather go with the option that offers a higher return on investment, or take a risk with the single, confined experience?

If you answered “better ROI” for that last question, you’re on the right track. If you answered anything else, keep reading — just know we’re keeping a close eye on you.

What Constitutes Personalized Corporate Gifts?

This may have seemed like a silly or unnecessary thing to ask, but in reality, it’s an excellent question. Before you can understand the importance and impact of custom corporate gifts, you need to know what they are.

The first thing you need to know is that consumable also means forgettable. That holds true for an experience like a golf trip, but it’s also true of anything consumable physically, like perishables, food or even one-time-use items. For maximum ROI, the ideal choice is a gift or item your recipient will keep and use multiple times, and may even be able to display in some way.

A bottle of champagne or wine might seem like a good gift idea, but once your recipient uncorks and drinks it, the bottle ends up in the trash. In other words, it’s a nice gesture, but it provides no long-term brand exposure for your business.

With that in mind, personalized corporate gifts can be anything permanent. Some examples of corporate gift ideas include coffee mugs, wallets, clothing and accessories, small electronics, office décor, tools, pens and stationery.

Let’s say you do decide to gift a bottle of wine to a client to celebrate your relationship. You could still do that, but think about including custom engraved or etched glasses. Your client will drink the wine from the glasses you provide, and then they will take them home, offering even more exposure for your brand.

You can get as creative as you want. At a public event, hand out mouse pads or tote bags with your brand logo and name printed on them. On a company summer retreat at a beach or outdoor park, hand out towels, umbrellas, Frisbees or other useful gear emblazoned with your company’s brand. But don’t stop there.

You can personalize bags, apparel, technology and small electronics, travel accessories and luggage, housewares, sporting goods, books and magazines, posters — just about anything is customizable these days.

How Do You Pick the Best Business Gifts for Clients?

In general, business promotional gifts should be tailored to your audience and clientele. If you’re looking for employee gift ideas, or you’re going to be handing out employee recognition gifts, you’ll want to choose something different than what you’d give your customers.

Choosing the right gift involves taking time to get to know your gift recipients.  However, it is not always possible to know your gift recipients, especially if you’re going to be interacting or engaging with a broad audience. Let’s say you’re attending an expo or trade show, for example. There’s no way to know for sure what types of people you will be interacting with, and what likes or dislikes they will have.

In that case, make a blanket decision and tailor your gift to the experience itself. One of our earlier examples involved handing out towels or umbrellas to fellow beachgoers. Look at the event, nearby conditions and consider the local area to find some great ideas for corporate logo gifts.

At a coffee shop? Hey, it’s a great time to hand out those personalized mugs you’re so fond of! At a geek or gaming expo? Find something electronic or technology-related your visitors would love to have. Visiting foreign clientele? Bring something from your native country or area to share that may not be as accessible where you’re going.

When it comes to corporate gifts for employees, the concept is no different. If you don’t know your audience or don’t have the opportunity, try to choose something that fits the locale or current events. At a company Christmas party, for instance, you can hand out holiday-themed stockings or ornaments with your company logo.

Pro tip: Get opinions and input from others before handing out your gifts. If you’re giving them to employees, enlist the help of fellow management. If you’re giving the gifts to customers or potential clients, ask your colleagues and coworkers. It’s always a good idea to get multiple opinions and thoughts on something. This not only works to assure you that you’ve made the right choice, but it helps you gauge interest in the gifts you’ll be handing out.

Best Practices for Sharing Customized Corporate Gifts

There’s no ideal moment or trigger for handing out customized business gifts. Frankly, you’ll be the best judge of that, since you know more about your audience and clientele than we do.

But there is something you should keep in mind, particularly when choosing gifts. Marketing 101 dictates that anything with your brand logo or name on it reflects directly on your company and employees. That means if you give out something cheap, shoddy or downright ugly, it’s going to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. They’re going to share it, talk about it and remember it. If they remember something bad or negative, well, that’s what they’re going to associate your brand with. And, if nobody ends up using your swag, you’re just wasting your money.

Cost is always a concern when dealing with things like this, but sometimes it can be too much of a factor. Don’t go with a cheaper, less effective gift simply because you can save a few bucks. You wouldn’t choose a more expensive gift that’s not as valuable to your audience, so don’t do it in the opposite direction, either.

Make sure whatever you choose is not just up to par, but exceeds the quality and expectations of comparable items. People will remember an excellent gift, especially when the item lasts years or longer. Plus, the items will be highly shareable not just in person, but on social media, as well. Can you imagine the kind of exposure that can come from someone tweeting or sharing a post that the flashlight you gave them lasted five or 10 years? It would even put up a solid fight against name-brand items in that case. This is possible, but only if you consider the quality of the company logo gifts you choose.

A good benchmark is to look at similar items on the market as your gift. If what you’re giving away is unique, then you’ll just have to wing it, sadly. But it’s probably not one-of-a-kind unique, so you should have some base level to compare yours to. Let’s say you settle on giving out branded flash drives. Not only do you have to consider the type of drive, but you’ll also need to choose an appropriate storage size. USB storage drives come in smaller increments like 512MB — which isn’t much — all the way up to a couple of terabytes of space. To choose the best size, you can look at popular storage drives being sold on various markets and through electronics retailers. If no one buys the 1GB drives, then you know giving them out is probably not going to have a significant impact on your audience, either.

Finally, make sure there’s ample time before the deadline to iron out any quirks or problems with the gifts you order. It’s not uncommon to run into printed fabrics or items that have your brand name misspelled. Is the color of your logo off, or does it look terrible in the resolution and format you chose when printing on plastic or ceramic? Whatever the case, you don’t want to be left at zero hours with a less-than-phenomenal inventory.

Imagine how embarrassing it would be to hand out thousands of T-shirts that say “Joe’s Poo Emporium” as opposed to “Pool Emporium.” Give yourself enough time to fix mistakes or problems before the gifts need to be handed out or given away. This also puts less stress on the company doing the printing, and trust us, they will appreciate you for it.

Pro tip: Unless you already have something designed — or paid for — work with the printing company to select the best format, resolution and colors for the logo and content you’re using. Every printer is different, and may offer separate specifications, so keep this in mind. It’s also true that printers sometimes use proprietary equipment and hardware that calls for unique specifications.

Where Can I Order Personalized Gifts for Employees, Clients and Partners?

Alright, you’ve had the full rundown, and you understand why personalized corporate gifts with logos are important. You know how to choose them, where to give them out and how to maximize their shareability. What now? Where do we go from here?

Forgive us, but this is where we toot our own horn.

Sure, there are plenty of places where you can find personalized corporate gifts for customers and employees. But they just cannot compete with our stock and selection of items. We can help you find unique, impressionable gifts and make sure your company logo or brand name is front and center for maximum exposure.

You can choose from hoodies to tumblers, backpacks to sticky notes and everything in between. Our catalog includes more than 800,000 items total, and you can get your company logo printed on every one of those items. Dare we say impressive?

If you’re interested, feel free to reach out for a quick quote. Someone from the team will get back to you, and help you choose the best gifts for your employees and customers. If you have custom artwork or decals, we can use it to print on the items for you, but don’t fret if you don’t have anything. We have an arsenal of experienced and talented graphic artists who can do it for you.

If you’re ready to step into the world of corporate giving, we’ve got everything you need to get started. Come work with us on gifts that will wow your current and future clients.