Using Promotional Items in Retail Stores

For the uninitiated, the concept of giving away items in order to increase sales might sound odd, but in fact, it’s one of the best and most effective ways of using promotional items.

Immediate and Long-term Purchase Incentives

Using promotional items as purchase incentives simply means giving away items in a way that induces your customers to make more purchases, or make larger purchases. In its most basic form, this can be the simple “buy one, get one free” type of strategy that is often used to get rid of items that aren’t selling well, or any time where a store is holding a sale. These types of immediate purchase incentives are a great way of moving stock that is slow to sell, or of increasing sales of a high mark-up item by offering free gifts with a purchase of that item. For example, if you sell outdoor furniture, you might offer a free sun umbrella with every purchase of a set of outdoor furniture.

Alternatively, you can give away promotional items in a way that increases your sales in the long term, by creating an incentive plan that customers can take part in. This type of long-term purchase incentive plan offers your customers a free gift of a certain value when they make a number of purchases in your store. An easy way to do this is to create business card-sized items that you distribute to customers, and then each time they make a purchase, you stamp or tick the card to make a record of it. You can also record the value of the purchase, if you wish, depending on the structure of your incentive plan.

When creating your plan you’ll choose a threshold at which the customer can choose a free gift—ten is usually the preferred number. Offer a variety of promotional items to the customer when they’ve made their ten purchases, and you not only create some goodwill by giving away a free item, you’re also distributing some advertising material at the same time, since your promotional items are branded with your company name and logo. In addition, incentive plans such as these are a great way of inducing customers to shop at your store rather than a competitor’s.

Collectibles

Offering collectible items is another great way of increasing traffic over a long period of time. With this strategy you offer, for example, a different free toy, collector’s tin or other item each week or each month with a customer purchase. This invites your customers to return often so that they can collect every item in the set, and at the end of the promotional period, you will have gained a large number of loyal customers who will continue to shop at your store.

Selling Promotional Items for Profit

Many retail stores and companies—even smaller ones—sell items that are branded with their own company name, logo or image. This can be a very profitable method of getting your advertising out to the public, particularly if you sell high-visibility items such as clothing, bags and umbrellas. When selling promotional items in this way, it’s usually a good idea to choose items that are appropriate for your particular store—for example, in a computer store you might sell branded mouse mats, while clothing and bags are ideal for school or university stores.