Gifts for free

Most people when looking at promotional gifts think about pens, diaries and the such. These are fine and easy to distribute, but usually have only enough printing space for your message. With the current financial situation you need to be thinking beyond that. How can you make your promotional gifts work for you, before you send them? How can you make sure that you recover the cost by the time you distribute them?

Most promotional gifts work along the lines of because your recipients are reminded of you they are more likely to come back to you next year or more likely to refer you to their contacts. Fine, but how can you put a figure on this return when business everywhere is struggling?

Quite simply, get paid to distribute your promotional products. Not a huge amount, just enough to cover the production and distribution costs. Don't be greedy and people will be pleased to work with you and effectively your promotional products are free.

The way to do this is to sell advertising space on your products. So here I'm not talking items with small print areas, I'm talking larger, but still cheap, items with plenty of print space. We're talking calendars, mouse mats and clothing.

Clothing is fine to litter with plenty of other logos if you are giving the items out at an event and calendars can cost that little bit more, so personally mouse mats are my favourite here. And it's amazingly simple to go. Across the top of the mousemat put your logo and contact details then split the remainder of the mat into 2. Most of the remaining space is used to display a calendar - this gives the mouse mat a purpose - a reason for the recipient to keep it and use it.

Then the remainder of the space is available for a few adverts. This space is sufficient to hold several logos or even more website addresses. Depending which you choose, charge a small amount per advert space and fill it up with adverts. The more mats you are producing the better it is for the advertisers - the more your advert is being seen. You can even give them one when they are produced so they feel they have got something for their cash!

But, why would people want to advertise on your mousemats? Well, it works on several levels. First, you know the recipients and they are your customers. Therefore, they will see these adverts not as adverts, but as referrals. Also, because they are your customers, you know something about them. For example, a web designer might know they are sending the mousemats to small businesses. Therefore accountants, printers and the likes might be of interest as well to their customers.