As a small business, giving gifts to customers at strategic times of the year breeds goodwill and helps keep loyal, long-term clients. Building healthy client relationships through thoughtful acts such as gift-giving has been known to help businesses remain profitable.
Great gift ideas for clients include thoughtful gifts such as personalized bags, gift baskets, and desk calendars, among others. These types of gifts are not cheap, yet they’re not so expensive that you have to break the bank to get them. They are tasteful, thoughtful, and a tried and tested way to keep your clients happy all year long.
Giving gifts to your clients shows appreciation to them clients, create loyalty and promotes brand awareness. It shows the client that you care way more than just about making a profit, especially when you give thoughtful gifts.
Rules for Picking Client Gifts
At holiday time, the stores are often filled with all kinds of gift ideas. These options may have you feeling overwhelmed unless you lay down a few rules for picking out suitable gifts for clients. Some of the rules you can follow when picking out client gifts for your small business include the following:
1. The Chosen Gift Should Represent your Brand
How do you stay on brand when sending out client gifts? One way is to consider the values that your business holds before buying the gifts. For instance, if you’re a business that is all about saving the environment, you cannot give out products that harm the environment. In the same vein, this gift can also be branded to represent your brand. Such gifts as personalized tote bags, branded mugs, etc., are some examples of ways to represent your brand while gifting clients. However, you should avoid sending a gift just to advertise your brand. The purpose of the gift should be to appreciate the client; brand awareness should be a secondary motive.
2. Client Gifts Should not Be Too Cheap
You don’t have to break the bank shopping for these gifts; however, you also definitely don’t want to come across as cheap. Cheap gifts could sometimes annoy the customer, so if you think your business cannot afford them, it’s better to not send anything at all than to send a cheap gift with no value. This doesn’t mean that you must shop for luxury brands for your gifts; rather, these gifts just need to be practical and thoughtful. The amount of thought and resources you put into a gift would tell a client exactly how much you value them. The same goes for when you’re looking for gift ideas to reward your employees. So don’t bother gifting such things as a hot water flask that can’t keep water hot.
3. Don’t Gift Your Services
It could be tempting to just offer gift certificates for your business or a discount; however, these types of gifts not only come across as lazy, but it also creates the impression that you place so little importance on your product or service that you’re willing to give it away for free to avoid buying something else. They may also feel that you’re offering free service to your customers in exchange for reviews. Customers can sense a fake gift. The client patronizes your business most of the year; when it’s time for gift giving, gift them something unexpected by looking outside your small business.
4. Include a Hand Written Note
What better way to make sure a gift is personalized than throwing in a sweet little note appreciating the customer and how much they have done for your business? If possible, each note should be unique and address an individual customer.
Gift Ideas for Customers of Small Businesses
- Tote Bag Gift Basket: Tote bags are strong, durable, and very easy to personalize. For this reason, they make the best gift baskets. The customer gets to keep and reuse the bag long after they have used up all the gifts in the bag. Ideas for what to put in the bag may include tea, candles, coffee, small teddy bears, candy canes, cooking oils, sauces, spices, etc.
- A self-heating Mug: As their name implies, these kinds of mugs would keep your drink warm while you drink. They often come with USB-powered coasters. They’re app-controlled, and one can set the desired temperature for their drink via the app. Like all innovations, some brands of self-heating mugs could sometimes not function as advertised. So make sure to choose a tried and tested mug before gifting it to your customers.
- Desk Calendars: You can’t go wrong with desk calendars because, never mind that there are phones and tablets to do the job of date-keeping, everyone still needs to circle a date on their desk calendar once in a while. Asides from being a practical gift for your customers, these calendars are also a great promotional item for your business. They’re easy to brand and often displayed in visible locations all year round by the people who use them. Be careful to keep your calendar tasteful and not all about advertising your business. You could do this by noting the public holidays, including a witty quote on every page, or other things to make your customer love it more. But also, never forget to include your business contact information, business hours, photos of your products/services, and your business logo.
- Custom Water Bottle: Custom water bottles are a popular gift because everybody drinks water. Doctors advise everyone to drink a certain amount of water daily. Buy a bottle that can contain enough water for one day, and encourage your clients to fill it up and drink it up daily. It’s a great way to show you care about your clients. These bottles are also pretty easy to brand.