Business-to-business Gifts and Promotions

Business-to-business Gifts and Promotions

Business gifts and promotional products used by business-to-business companies typically differ from those used by business-to-consumer companies. Typically, B2B companies have a more defined target audience to reach, but those customers are typically more valuable in the long-term, either making larger purchases, more frequent purchases, or both. B2B companies are generally more likely to have a longer sales cycle and a more complex value proposition. B2B customers are also much more likely to be making purchasing decisions in the office rather than at home and have more decision makers affecting their purchasing process.

Here we address the opportunities and challenges that are specific to business-to-business companies in the process of finding and converting prospective clients. Fortunately, we explain how they can use branded business gifts and promotional products to ease this cycle and gain more long-term customers.

Using Business Gifts and Promotional Products to Start a Dialog
For business-to-business companies, reaching qualified decision-makers is often difficult: the more valuable they are, the harder they are to reach. Traditional B2C direct mail and telemarketing are based on having a large and relatively accessible audience, perhaps millions of potential buyers. In B2B sales, a typical market may be senior management at companies within a particular industry, perhaps only dozens of individuals that have very specific needs. Business gifts provide a unique opportunity to gain access to an audience like this, if used correctly.

First, expect to spend money on the items you choose --- a $1 promotional pen won't make an impact on the average CEO. Second, make sure your promotional mailings are creative and portray how your services can help these companies: even an expensive business gift without the right context will be less effective as a marketing piece. Third, spread your budget over multiple mailings: don't expect to get meetings after the first mailing, it takes time to build awareness. Creative, quarterly mailings that offer diversified benefits while progressively building upon the utility of your gifts will have better chances of creating sales opportunities than a single mailing.

Trade Show and Event Giveaways
At trade shows, conferences and conventions, you are constantly competing for your target audience’s time and attention. When planning promotional business gifts for a trade show, consider how much time you need structure your promotional plan in order to best explain your value proposition. For example, if you are selling a complicated service or piece of software to a small target audience, it may be worth 50 cents or a dollar per minute to speak with a qualified buyer. Based on your business, you should decide ahead of time whether it makes more sense for you to spend a half-hour selling your product or service to 100 potential buyers or a minute explaining your company to 1,000. If you'd rather have quality time with a smaller audience, go with trade show business gifts. If it makes more sense to touch a broader audience, go with trade show giveaways. If you target a smaller audience, you will have the opportunity to be more interactive with the crowd in explaining the benefits of your serviced; they'll also be leaving with a tangible product that will be more memorable after the trade show is over.

Turning Mail-order into Direct Mail
If you ship a physical product to your customers, it should always be accompanied by a promotional product to reinforce your brand name and customer service. Every time you don't, you're missing an opportunity to send your brand right to a buyer's desktop. While many companies will include a catalog or coupon with product shipments, most do not take advantage of the opportunity to send a piece of advertising that can be used on a daily basis, and that's a mistake. It's an opportunity to reach your most valuable audience, your existing customers, while avoiding the largest cost of doing a mailing, the shipping cost.

Corporate Gifts and Customer Retention
Most business-to-business companies do understand the value of a business corporate gift. Over 70% of businesses send holiday advertising gifts to their customers and the percentage is even higher amongst B2B companies. When it comes to business gifts as a means of improving customer retention, your gifting plan should fit your business objectives. This may mean using a tier system to focus your budget on your top customers when buying holiday gifts. Non-holiday business gifts may be highly appropriate as well. If your company is only getting a percentage of your customers' total business, use a loyalty program to increase that percentage. If your customers have annual contracts, use anniversary gifts to increase their likelihood or renewing or to promote additional service offerings as part of their renewal.