The Promo Coach

There is that time of year, every year, when employees begin to squirm in their seats about what they should get their bosses. “Last year’s fruitcake was a failure! If I don’t choose right, will I miss out on a bonus”? This is not one sided, as bosses begin to squirm as well. They are asking themselves who they should and shouldn’t give a gift to.

It is a shame that such a joyous effort of gift giving and gift receiving in the workplace is so nerve-wracking. It may be a good idea to review some groundwork to help you - as the employee or the boss - make the right decisions when giving out gifts.

As a general rule of thumb, the boss should try to give gifts to his/her direct office employees. Secretaries, personal assistants, and other individuals who are his/her direct support staff. It is also acceptable for the boss to give corporate gifts to corporate officers or department heads. But make sure you do not play a game of favoritism. Even if you share a particularly friendly relationship with one or more employees, it is not your place to reward them in a business setting for that friendship.

It is better to give no gift than to give a bad gift. No fruitcake, no ties, no calendars. Often, a card is the best solution. It is thoughtful, heartfelt, and not risky at all. If you are taking a risk, be absolutely certain. You do not want the awkwardness of giving a gift the boss already has or doesn’t want. Also, do not give gifts that may insult. Clothes that are too large, cologne or perfume, or anything else that might suggest that what they wear today or look like today is not acceptable. It certainly is not easy, but getting a good business gift is possible. Good luck!

Tradeshow events and other promotions have always proved a popular way for a company to promote and give that special touch. Most companies believe that promoting your company at events and shows will give you a unique way to increase your client database and generate new business for your company. As many people know, the difference between promotional gifts and corporate merchandise is the quality and engraving space. Corporate merchandise can offer clients and companies a much bigger and better engraving and branding area, which will allow you to stand out above everyone else.

Below are some corporate gifts that companies offer as best selling tradeshow gifts. Companies have used these successfully to promote themselves and their products or services. Are you looking for something fun and modern which can help your company stand out? Or do you need something modern and yet executive? For example, a sterling silver key ring can be the perfect gift for your company to use. Offering a massive impact, a sterling silver key ring is the ideal gift to use for any sort of promotion and will allow your company to make that special touch to any promotion.

Are you looking for a practical and yet still modern and very well used promotional gift? Then a promotional pen should be at the top of your list. With a good engraving space down the barrel of the pen, your promotion can be sure it will have success written all over it.
Are you looking for something that will cause a noise with your promotion? Then a promotional whistle key ring is the perfect gift to get your company noticed and heard in any business situation. With a good branding area, your company can be sure to get a good promotional message added onto this item!

So you are retiring..after many years of working, and about a decade of hard work with your current company. And what did you get for it? Your manager gave you a pen as your retirement gift. Wow, what a letdown. You certainly don’t feel like you have been a valued employee or an asset to the company. Couldn’t your manager have done a better job in choosing a business gift for your retirement? So many years of loyalty, hard work, goals reached, meetings held and attended, phone calls, conferences, stress, and extra hours – the list seems virtually endless – and all you have to show for it is a measly pen.

Managers should really make the extra effort for employees who have been with a company for years. Sticking with the same company shows loyalty and commitment and this behavior deserves recognition, especially upon retirement! Just giving a thoughtless gift, like a pen or some gift card, shows no appreciation from the giver and that no effort went into the selection of the gift. Something more personal, customized and unique is a good idea to show that you have appreciated and have valued an employee’s hard efforts and work over the years.

Does your retiring employee like golf or sailing? Buy something that shows you know and remember their interests. Something they can use and enjoy and something they will value. This will make them feel valued. Shop online if you are looking for ideas or if you are short on time. You can have order expedited and quickly delivered. So even if you procrastinate, you can still deliver and give something that counts, something special that your employee will be proud to display and keep for years as a keepsake and a memoir of his or her years with the company.

Many businesses are very aware of the large potential that promotional corporate gifts have for boosting business. However, at the same time, these businesses are at a complete loss as to how to make the best use of them. Surprisingly, there are numerous ways to increase the bottom line. How? By not overlooking and taking advantage of some good situations for distributing promotional products. You can pass them out for employee bonuses; too often managers and their marketing departments are so consumed with pleasing current customers and attracting new ones that they tend to forget about the people working so hard to help make all this happen. But employees are a company’s most valuable asset and certainly pleasing one customer or prospect benefits your bottom line, but keeping your top sales force (your employees) happy can bring you streams of clients and leads – and this will benefit your bottom line today, tomorrow, and every day thereafter.

You can also distribute them as raffle prizes. The next time you host an event, whether it is a business conference or a corporate fundraiser, you can host a raffle. People enjoy the opportunity to win something for nothing (or next-to-nothing, depending on your raffle entry policies and rules). By using promotional gifts as your prizes, you can buy just a few larger, “high-ticket” items and wow not just the prize-winners but everyone who enters. You can even wow all those who just watch the event!

Another idea is to give them out as raffle tickets. A raffle is a marketing opportunity that is multi-layered. And another way to maximize such an opportunity (in addition to buying several expensive promotional items to give out as prizes) is to purchase a bunch of very inexpensive items to give out instead of paper tickets. This way, everyone who enters gets to take home something with your name on it, making everyone who enters a winner!

Conference bags are really good promotional tools. Many brand promotions can be a success if printed conference bags are the promotional gifts being distributed to your audience at tradeshows, conferences, exhibitions, etc. It is quite common for companies to pass out attractive bags at such events. Because of the increasing popularity of these bags, the manufacturers tend to offer a wide variety of bags, which have different designs, prices, colors, and features. They are suitable for most types of brand promotions, whether it is for a small event or a larger one.

Conference bags can give you a ground-breaking change in your brand promotions. They help a business professionally organize an event. For example, if you are participating in a conference organized by a company, what would you think if you’re given a bag that contains all the things needed for the conference? This would give you a positive feeling, possibly elation. Items, such as pens, notepads, brochures, and conference documents are necessities that need to be distributed during these events. So these bags make the organizing and distributing processes for these things much simpler, and at the same time, they offer a professional ambience to the event. And that’s not all - the bags will make your brand name popular in and around the event location!

Conference bags not only perform their main role in conferences but they also offer many roles outside of a conference. In fact, the actual role of the bags as an advertising tool begins soon after the participants leave the conference location. When they get dispersed from the conference and travel in different directions to their homes or offices, the conference bags of course travel along with them, and display your brand name in a promotional manner. Thus, the brand gains publicity in various public places. So for your next branding or promotional event, consider passing out conference bags as your promotional products!

Corporate gifts are utilized by employers for various situations, including rewarding employees, sponsors, and suppliers who have contributed to a company’s success. Finding business gifts for these purposes is easy, as long as you have an idea of what is suitable for your receivers. Many companies give personalized gifts to customers or clients because they believe that the appreciation will be better remembered.

One of the best ways to find a good gift is do in depth research on the kind of things that your recipient likes. If you are giving the gifts to your entire staff, then the same business gifts will be just fine.

You can find corporate gifts online. Online is a great place to find and choose a wide variety of gifts. The many kinds of gifts available are of different types; you just need to select one that best fits the purpose. A good gift should be of value and should be perceived valuable to the client. A gift will tell a lot about your company, so build the company’s image by choosing exemplary gifts.

Imprinted promotional gifts with a company logo and an message of appreciation will act as good value. You also need to remember that these are corporate gifts and they do not need to be personalized too much. So ask yourself if the gift you are giving someone is suitable for them, a man and a woman’s gift should be different, clearly – make it a fitting and appropriate gift.

Fun corporate gifts are also a path to go down when deciding on gifts for corporate purposes. You do not need to be too professional when choosing gifts. You can add some fun to the gifts. Remember, the main goal is to create a lasting impression on the recipient’s mind. You can find very affordable gifts, but the worth of the gift and the functionality of the gift should be on your mind when you’re shopping. So go for unique items that stand out!

Promotional items and business gifts have come a long way over the past couple of decades. These gifts are no more only rolled out at Christmas and restricted to coffee coasters and plastic rulers. The market is more sophisticated both in terms of what is supplied but also in the expectations of purchasers. What can business gifts do? Well there are three fundamental things to consider when choosing one; your company, your promotional campaign, and your targeted audience. Any marketing campaign must be appropriate to your company. Your campaign and strategy should promote what your company stands for and its values. For example, don’t choose confectionary if you are a health food company – this may be obvious I know, but you should get the general idea!

Marketing campaigns are created and developed in all shapes and sizes. If they are well thought out, they will be designed to reach specific goals, objectives, and targets. Your choice of promo items must be aligned with these goals that you have initially set. You need to ask yourself if the gifts deliver results and enhance the campaign. So make sure you don’t choose a promo item just because you like it.

You should also determine who your target audience is and then profile them. You need to make sure you understand what drives them, what interests they have, what lifestyles they live, and what pushes their buttons. Your choice of business gifts must be appropriate, desirable and useful or interesting to them. Longevity is a key factor here, so choose a product that will stay with recipients for as long a time as possible; whether it’s a personal gift or business related gift, you want high exposure.

So if you can align these three things; company, campaign, and customer - then your promotion stands a good chance of being a success!

Exporting is an extremely effective and valuable way for companies to extend their reach and increase their revenue. It is, however, full of various problems and potential pitfalls, which may be just around the corner for the unprepared or inexperienced exporter. With the relative weakness of the pound, and the downturn in the home market, for companies who understand the business of exporting and do it right, it can pay nice dividends.

Language, of course, is an obvious consideration. But surprisingly, many companies fall short of fully understanding and realizing cultural differences. They often fail to appreciate the subtle (and sometimes most obvious) nuances between different cultures and different ways of doing business. Cross cultural differences are very important in international marketing, and can at times make it or break it for you. That is why companies should put more efforts and focus on this area; they will need to step up to the plate if they want to be successful.

Localization needs to be part of any comprehensive export company – reaching businesses or individuals on a localized level appropriate to their culture can be very powerful and is the holy grail of global online marketing. But beware – mistakes can be costly. What is acceptable in one country maybe not be in another market. There are quite a few infamous advertising campaigns out there, which are simplistic but powerful illustrations of this fact.

In many business cultures, face to face contact is still preferred to more modern 21st century methods, such as email, video conferencing, and online marketing.

Business gifts are an essential part of the courtship of business abroad and can help promote and cement a business relationship. But again, beware of offending with an inappropriate gift (such as giving a letter opener or a clock to a Chinese company– as both have connotations of death)!

Promotional Gifts exist for a reason – to get response and increase the ROI (Return On Investment) of a marketing campaign. But realizing and knowing this does not answer questions like: how often do you measure the ROI and where do you actually begin?

To answer this you have to set some strategic objectives for your campaign. Let’s take the example of using stress balls to direct people to a new website. Every campaign needs objectives because if you do not know where you want to go, you won’t know how to get there. So set your goals and objects and make them clear. Also, make them SMART – specific, measureable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Then, choose a promotional gift that ties into the campaign theme. And finally capture response data for analysis and for comparing to the campaign objectives.

As an example, let’s take a campaign that is centered on reducing stress at work. Perhaps a stress armchair is chosen and printed with the website address and a ‘call to action’ – giving people a reason or incentive to visit the new website. Then by using website monitoring and tracking software – such as Google Analytics or some other statistical software package, measures are set to capture the number of visits to specific pages, actions (such as requests for further information), and sign ups to email lists or to a certain, specific program.

Once the data has been collected over a given time period, it can then be compared to the campaign objectives – the strategic objects set in terms of number of visitors and actions. Of course you cannot measure everything; there is a trend in some organizations that is called ‘analysis-paralysis’. However, simply spending marketing budget is realistically not enough in these economic times, when every business action has to make a positive contribution!

There are many parallels between business and sport; goal orientated, staying ahead of the game, focus, training, individual achievements, working as a team. It’s not unusual for retired sports stars to become business coaches as the skill sets can often be seamlessly transferred to the corporate arena. As a leader you have to set an example. By showing a strong work ethic you will reap the rewards and have a positive effect on the people around you. Just like in sports, the more time and effort you put in, the more you will get out, and the more likely you are to succeed. And like a rower training at 6am in the dead of winter, sometimes businesses can be cold and lonely places and seem a long way from your ultimate goal. It is important to take small steps. Keep you and your staff motivated by breaking down your “big hairy goals” into little bite size chunks or short term targets. This is a tried, tested, and true technique for athletes training towards a goal that can at times be daunting and seem unachievable.

In terms of teamwork, trust is key in top performing teams. Like in football, each individual on the team has to trust each other so that they can perform well and win together as a team and this concept also applies for business. A great team can pull together and compensate for possible weaknesses in some areas. So it is important to make sure everyone knows their roles and understands them.
Trust in your leader is huge. Both businesses and sports teams need strong leadership, but also total faith in their leaders throughout the entire team. There will always be disagreements but for the dynamics to work and be in synch, everyone must trust the leader’s judgment and decisions.