The Art of Giving

Tis the season and all that so I thought we'd take a look at promotional giveaways. A powerful marketing tool in any business' armoury, the knack is in identifying the right type of giveaway. Get it right and you can get a serious up-turn in new business, get it wrong and you've got a costly 'drive-by' traffic spike where a sudden rush of visitors disappears as quickly as it came.

The aim of your promotion

What you want to achieve from your promotion should be what shapes it, drives the decision making process and measures its success. Set specific goals. E.g. Do you want 20% more sales, 30% more renewals or 50% more prospects signing up?

Not all promotions are about directly generating sales. Information is the currency of online business… promotions are an excellent way of capturing the contact details of prospects.

Return On Investment

In most businesses the mere mention of giveaways has the bean counters choking with incredulity, "You want to give something away for free?"! Quite right too, and if you're considering a giveaway then you should be equally tough on yourself.

As with any marketing or promotional activity, the most important thing is ROI. With your aims clearly laid out, you should be able to put a figure on the value you believe the promotion will deliver.

Don't decide what to giveaway before you've got some cost-benefit projections worked out. There's no problem in giving away a Ferrari if it will generate 10 times that in increased profit.

Who's on your gift list?

What will work best for you… spreading your net as wide as possible, or just having a handful or even one item to giveaway? Should your promotion be open to all or just a selected audience?

What's the optimum balance of perceived value and reach? Will one high-ticket item get a better response than many low-value ones? Is a particular market segment likely to respond more? Will different offers work better for different segments?

Will 1 Ferrari do better than 10,000 ipads? Will 10% off for everyone do better than 25% off for a select audience?

5 key factors to successful offers

Here are some tips on to make sure your online promotion achieves your aims and delivers the greatest ROI:

1. Know your audience – what offer will trigger the response you're looking for from your audience to achieve the goals you set? Don't sacrifice effectiveness for scale. There's no point hitting thousands of people with an ineffective offer.
2. Relevancy – offers are stronger if they support your products/ services. What would customers who use your products/ services also appreciate? What would enhance the need/ desire to buy from you?
3. Stretch your budget – Discounts reduce margins but they don't require outlay – no uptake, no cost. What valuable information could you package up for download? 'Digital' products for download save on delivery costs/ admin time. What loss leaders will generate upsell? What guarantees or warrantees could you add for free?
4. Brand building – tie your offer in with your brand. What fits your corporate image? Does your giveaway carry your branding? Make sure the offer doesn't cheapen your brand.
5. Timing – the best offers are ones that have a definite end date to them. This encourages action. It also pays to create topical promotions that take advantage of what's on your audiences' mind now. Whether that's seasonal, a specific event or a change in the marketplace. Run promotions when the timing's right, not to some arbitrary marketing schedule.

And as a bonus, here's a 6^th tip:

6. Add a bonus – think of how you can separate your offer to create a 'bonus'. Whether that's an 'extra' product or service, free delivery, an extended warranty or a coupon for money off their next purchase… you can greatly increase the value of your offer simply through the structure and wording of it.