The marketing gift that keeps on giving

(November 2002) The old adage “it’s better to give than receive” is true, but before you start ordering this season’s gifts for your clients, you should think about why you are sending them.

Perhaps you distribute gifts to thank people for being your clients and supporting you over the year. Maybe you’re just celebrating the season.

You might also think of your gift-giving efforts as a marketing tool to help you grow your business. When you have a limited budget, you need to leverage your marketing investments to get the maximum return and gifts can be a wonderful way to do just that.

Gifts that tell

As you think about why you’re giving your gifts, you also need to choose your gift carefully. Sending a fruitcake with a card probably will not get the best response from most people. You want your gift to stand out and get noticed. Sending any old gift is not enough — it needs to tell the recipient about you and your company.

I use a Phoenix, Arizona-based company called Gift Solutions for all of our company gifts, which are all assembled especially for us [Advisor.ca note: See the end of this article for links to some Canada-based gift sites]. We talk with Gift Solutions about 45 days before we want to send our gifts out and we tell them what we want to accomplish. They then find a way to help us reach our goal.

Each year when we do this, we get a strong response from all the people on our gift list. Some people have even told us they didn’t want to open them because they looked so nice. We have found that it doesn’t cost any more to take our gift giving to this next level where the impact is much more powerful.

Clever customization

Gift Solutions allows us to put custom labels on many of the items, a perfect way to keep our message in front of our clients and prospects for a long time. For example, if we do a gift that has chocolates and different kinds of coffee in it, we know the chocolates will be eaten very quickly. We also know the coffee may last a little longer. So we put our own custom message on the coffee.

By doing this, we not only enjoy the benefits of giving the gift, we also get name recognition over time. When you invest a little time up front, you can make great things happen with your gifts. It would be fun and easy to develop a gift that has a wonderful holiday theme and a variety of messages inside.

The gift of referrals

Some strategic labelling can also pay big dividends when you send your gift to a client’s office. As people in the office stop in to sample the sweets and treats, they are more likely to ask about you if the gift has your company name and information on it. This could be a very effective way to get new referrals.

Now, I don’t want you to think that I don’t care about the holidays or that all I want to do is get my marketing message out. I love the holidays. I think they’re a time of great celebration, but I also know that people are wasting time, energy and money sending out generic gifts hoping they will have an impact on their clients and prospects.

It’s not the gift’s fault if you didn’t start thinking ahead of time. Anyone can run into a store and get a cheese pack for their clients, but the gifts that get noticed are those that are special. And they’re special because you devoted time and effort to make them so.

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Looking to incorporate some of the above advice into your gift giving with clients this year? Here are some Canadian companies that also offer customizable gift baskets and packages:

www.byoungbaskets.com

www.boodlesofbaskets.com

www.expressgiftbaskets.net

www.itsinthebasket.com

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Looking for some unique yet thoughtful gift ideas for your clients? Whether it’s buying an acre of threatened Canadian habitat or having a lobster dinner delivered right to their doors, your client gift giving just got easier with Advisor.ca’s holiday gift giving guide.

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Martin R. Baird is president of Advisor Marketing, a full-service marketing management firm that provides a variety of services to financial advisors to help them improve their marketing methods and increase revenues, including seminars and conference speaking engagements on such topics as referrals, marketing, client communication and transitioning to fee. The firm’s Web site, www.advisormarketing.com, offers free marketing information and tools for financial advisors, including a free weekly e-mail newsletter. Baird is author of The 7 Deadly Sins of Advisor Marketing, a book that offers easy-to-implement marketing ideas for advisors. Advisor Marketing may be reached at 480-991-6421. Visit www.advisormarketing.com for marketing tactics that will help your business grow.

11/27/02