Many businesses mistakenly see giveaways or freebies as an expense they can do without, foolishly overlooking their branding and financial benefits. Of course, you will have to pay for the items you choose to give away upfront – but if you concentrate on getting certain things right, you could reap much more in sales than you paid out.
#1 Advertising
Using your giveaways or freebies as forms of advertising is, for want of a better word, a no-brainer. This can be easily done by having your business’s brand or logo printed on everyone in a way that is easily seen by everyone they interact with.
You can offer these gifts to your staff to be used at work, at home, or when they’re out and about, depending on the items. Plus, you can evengive them away to customers – or even better, give promotional corporate gifts to your clients, partners, and valued employees.Whatever the case, itis key that these items are good quality, as they will automatically be associated with your brand.
#2 Discounts
Whether you see discounts as a giveaway, they can be a hefty slice of your bottom line.However, if used correctly, they can encourage your customers that might not usually place large orders to do just that.
Of course, it is completely up to you to decide the amount of discount that you offer – or indeed what the actual criteria for each offer is set out to be. From a sales perspective, what is important is that you offer discounts connected to items or services that each customer wants to buy.
#3 Samples
With this in mind, you could go the full hog and offer samples of the products you aim to sell. It is a good idea to make your samples smaller than normal product size and that you target certain customers for this promotion. Sending samples of products out to uninterested parties is just a waste of time and effort; this can also be said of those customers already purchasing the normal larger-size product.
The whole idea of using samples is to gain more sales, so you want to targetcustomerswho buy products similar to your samples. For instance, if your business sells beauty products and you have some sample nail varnishes, you will want to target customers who already purchaseitems like false nails, nail files, and other nail and hand products.
#4 Recommendations
Another sure way to get new orders is to offer discounts, giveaways, or freebies to new customers and current customers who have recommended your business to friends and family. This can be effective if you state that the first order must be over a certain value to make it worth your while.
It might also be effective to make sure that the offer is for aproduct or service that is exclusive to that offer, using scarcity to make it more desirable. If you are choosing to make these items limited edition, you will need to make sure that they are numbered and that when you get to a certain number, you stop the giveaway option for that particular product or service.
