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Tips for a Successful Gift with Purchase Campaign

Guest post by: Elyse Cabral

Article Overview: Gift with Purchase Promotions can be a very cost effective and a successful way of achieving specific objectives however there are certain steps you need to follow to ensure that your Gift with Purchase campaign is a success. This article outlines all the steps you need to take in order to make your Gift with Purchase campaign a success.

Tips for a Successful Gift with Purchase Campaign

Gift with Purchase Promotions can be a very cost effective and a successful way of achieving specific objectives however there are certain steps you need to follow to ensure that your Gift with Purchase campaign is a success:



Set your Objectives

Decide what want to achieve and what the purpose of the campaign will be. Whether it is selling stock that has not been selling very well or encouraging customers to buy in bulk, as long as you know what you want to achieve and you make this your focus you have a better chance of achieving it, at the end of the campaign. If you are part of a marketing division, operating from a head-office, that includes a number of retail outlets, then a number of dominant factors will influence the creation and implementation of a Gift with Purchase marketing campaign. Some important factors to be considered are the exact type of business style and model and how the Gift with Purchase will be managed and implemented across the outlets. Some variables are whether the marketing campaign is for a franchisor/franchisee situation or for a business structure that is a head-office and various outlets managed by that office. In a Retail situation, whilst setting your objectives, you should work closely with Retailers to see if the objectives are realistic and whether they meet their specific needs and goals. It also allows you to work in with their schedules so as to ensure there are no other similar in store promotions happening at the same time which would distract from the campaign.

Pick a relevant item

The key to a successful Gift with Purchase Campaign is to pick the right Gift. Here are some tips:

• Choose an item customers will associate with your brand. For example while giving away a USB may be seen as a good gift, will customers associate it with your product? If you are in I.T. then a USB is good, if you are a Coffee Shop maybe give away a Travel Mug and if you are a hairdresser give away a Travel Brush. Tag Lines printed on the products will help in delivering your marketing message such: "Come back for a free Travel Mug refill with every lunch ordered".

• Choose a small item - remember retailers need to store it somewhere close to the register to give to customers so something too big will just make this more difficult.

• Try and co-brand the gift - sometimes Retailers will be more willing to come on board if the item is co-branded with the store's details as well as your brand - if you are a supplier to the retail outlet. That way they feel like they are also receiving promotion for their store and not just promoting your brand.

Make your offer clear

It is very important that when you create an offer that you are very specific in terms of what your customer needs to do in order to get the free gift and what they will receive. Here is a short checklist based on if you use a free Coffee Bag to be given away when 4 coffees are bought:

• Have you written what the customer needs to buy e.g. Buy 4 or More Coffees to receive a free Coffee Bag. Remember to be specific e.g. Is it 4 Large Coffees or any size.

• What will your customer receive e.g. Free Coffee Bag - is that a free Coffee Bag for every 4 Coffees purchased or is there a maximum of one free gift per customer

• Is there a timeframe for your promotion. Put an end date on all your printed material.

• ALWAYS include the condition that the offer is valid only while stocks last. This just covers you in case the promotion goes really well and you run out of gifts quickly.

Sometimes it can be difficult to put all this information onto a poster so just include the major details and then provide a website URL that customers can go to in order to read the full terms & conditions. Alternatively, print the terms and conditions on a separate flyer and have it handy if required.

Work closely with the Retailers



It is important to set guidelines and conditions that the retailers need to follow. As soon as you hand over the gifts to them they may decide to just start handing them out to everyone instead of following the promotion conditions. What they don't realise is that they are losing out from doing this because if customers think they get the gift without having to buy anything then they will not purchase the product on promotion and therefore the store will not achieve their objectives.

The Guidelines for the Retailers should be the same as the Conditions for the Promotion e.g. What they have to buy, when the promotion timeframe is etc. Other Guidelines that need to be included should be where the store needs to display their Point of Sale, how soon it has to be up, when they can take it down etc.

Promote your campaign



Just because you have created an in-store promotion, it does not guarantee that it will be successful. Your campaign needs to be supported by other forms of advertising and marketing. Dependent on your budget and the scale of your campaign this may involve Radio & Newspaper Advertisements. If it is a smaller campaign you might want to use some of the methods we used to promote our Coffee Bag Promotion:

• Posters & Flyers in-store

• Flyer drop in the local area in the week leading up to the promotion

• Cafe Bag was on display in the Coffee Shops

• Email sent to local clients

• Added to our Website Events Calender & Facebook Events Calender

• Sent numerous Twitter updates

• Took photos on the day & uploaded onto Facebook

• Did a News Item on our Website

• Did blogs leading up to and after the Promotion



Measure your Success

Back to Marketing 101 - measure your campaign! This is so crucial no matter what form of Marketing you are doing because if you do not measure your campaigns you are going to continue doing HIT or MISS campaigns where they sometimes work and they sometimes don't. Some very simple ways to measure your campaign:

• Compare sales of the product on promotion before & during the promotion

• Compare number of visitors to your store before & during the promotion

• Check the number of hits to your website before & during the promotion

Related Articles
  Custom Gift Card Programs for Businesses
  Gift certificates for referral
  Reasons to Buy Your Gifts Online
  Use Promotional Products To Communicate Your Marketing Campaign Message
  Compulsory Promotions for Franchisees and why they work

Article Tags: better chance, business structure, business style, coffee shop, dominant factors, exact type, franchisee, franchisor, implementation, important factors, marketing campaign, retail outlets, retail situation, stock, store promotions, travel mug, variables



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