Archive for September, 2009


NEW WEBSITE LAUNCH

 Monday, September 28th, 2009

The Corporate Gifts Company are delighted to launch our new website.

The new design features a fresh clean look with easier navigation and useability.

More importantly, there are some fantastic new benefits for our customers;

1. Prices have been reduced significantly across the board.

2. Prices now include Engraving and Set Up (so no extras for branding)

3. All orders are now inclusive of standard UK freight/carriage.

4. We are offering a free pre-production sample on every order, so you can be confident your logo or promotional message will be just as you require it before we go to production.

5. We are guaranteeing 7 day turnaround on branded items from stock – so that you can be confident your promotional items will get to you on time.

FIVE good reasons to chooseThe Corporate Gifts Company for your business gifts this Christmas.

The new webiste also incorporates our new items for Autumn 2009 (perfect timing for the Christmas executive gifts, staff gifts and customer thank yous) with exciting items such as the spinning propeller letter opener and the F1 car paper clip dispenser. (see all our new products here ).

Call our sales team today on 0845 430 2902.


Start thinking about your companies Christmas giftware needs.

 Friday, September 18th, 2009

After the difficult year we’ve all had maybe as we come out of the recession it’s time to say thank you to your staff and clients for helping keep you in business… Our Corporate Giftware range is perfect for Christmas orientated products. The silver products give even the dullest office a great Christmas feel. Particularly the Barware section is great for Christmas giftware, perhaps a wine bottle stopper or a hip flask would be an appropriate products for your hardworking staff. What about giving your best clients a thank-you gift this year, it’s been so tough out there in the business world that its about time to celebrate still being in business.

And perhaps… with all this potential giving going on that the hard done by promotional giftware market will see a lift ;)


4 Steps to Better Promotional Product Marketing

 Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

The first step in this process is to assess why people don’t buy from you or use your services. To determine why people don’t use your products or your services you can use surveys, focus groups & interviews to ascertain all of the possible reasoning. The general first answer why a customer doesn’t buy or use your product/s or service/s will revolve around unacceptable price, personal taste, the quality, availability, or bad awareness. It is the following answers that become more subtle and more revealing. The answer to understanding why people don’t use products & services sometimes lie in the reflective answers of the few than from the first and obvious answers of the majority.

The second stage is to attempt to appreciate why people do purchase a service or product from you. Whilst focus groups, surveys and interviews would seem useful here, they are actually less appropriate. The purpose of this exploration is to produce insights into your business, these blunt tools often don’t work. Frequent responses to the question of why a consumer purchases, such as “quality” or “price,” do not begin to explain the deep fundamental psychological and emotional reasons that persuade buying decisions. It is believed that to precisely determine why customers buy certain products & services, leading must be used to scrutinize the underlying motivators affecting buying decisions. Leading is an sales & interview technique that seeks to get to the heart of the motivators of buying decisions, buy asking open ended questions that the interviewee has to fill the blanks in. the answers are thought to be more factual.

The third step is to recognise the perfect customer for a particular product or service. While it is not rare to hear marketers say that “anyone with money their pocket is a possible customer,” such thinking reflects a mentality and not a marketing mind. Key marketing insights are best obtained when an individual thinks in terms of individual customers and in terms of what would particularly attract them. Customer prototyping is a quick but effective way to envisage an ideal customer for a product that typically represents or closely resembles a specific segment of the real populace. By using your imagination, the prototype becomes more vivid and develops specific qualities as opposed to the non-descriptive data that can be provided by demographics.Finally, armed with the knowledge of who the perfect purchaser is and why they behave the way they do, you will be able to utilise this information to choose the perfect promotional product to further entice them to use your products and services.

Finally, armed with the knowledge of who the perfect purchaser is and why they behave the way they do, you will be able to utilise this information to choose the perfect promotional product to further entice them to use your products and services.


BESPOKE USB FLASHDRIVES

 Friday, September 4th, 2009

BESPOKE USB FLASHDRIVES

The flashdrive is the promotional product of the decade; it has gone from a few megabytes (16mb at £20 plus just a few years ago) to unbelievable memory away; it’s a modern classic universally welcomed by the recipient as something size (many gigabytes) now! It is a promo give – away that certainly never gets thrown really to match any other corporate gift. useful they’ll use every day. Instant wow factor, genuine desirability, and longevity
The new larger memory sizes also mean that there’s more scope to upload content such as brochures, multimedia and other data.
Recent developments have broken away from the restriction of the standard designs which are normally simply engraved or printed with a corporate gift logo or promotional message.
Bespoke designs are now within easy reach with relatively low minimum quantities (just a few hundred) and affordable development and tooling costs (a few hundred pounds subject to design). Spread over a few hundred pieces, the bespoke flashdrive is now no more expensive than a bespoke lapel pin or a pair of cufflinks.
And design is only restricted to your imagination (or corporate guidelines, of course); from cars, planes, lorries, cartoon figures and licensed characters, to blinged insects, logo shaped flash drives and musical instruments. All incorporating your logo or corporate message for any promotion or event.
Call our sales team today and get free, no obligation visual for your bespoke flashdrive design.


The Personal Touch

 Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

The Personal Touch

 

In times of economic downturn, priorities change. If you are planning a marketing campaign you will undoubtedly need to take this into account. For consumers, debt levels, mortgage repayments and fuel costs fuel costs take precedence over wider concerns. In business, too, companies take a more inward approach, concentrating on cost cutting and cash flow rather than new markets and revenue streams. Both consumers and business will gravitate towards safe options; good, services, and brands that convey reassurance and familiarity. Quality and reliability became increasingly important and whilst all this jittery uncertainly is certainly challenging, it also provides major opportunities for companies to engage with their customers in a closer more meaningful way. Personalised marketing and individual communication are the new watch-words and marketers who get their heads round this new concept will have a distinct advantage in a highly competitive market place.

Corporate gifts are an ideal way to connect on a meaningful and personal level with your key customers, most promising prospects, and even your staff. The Corporate Gifts Co specialise in a high quality business gifts that will convey a sense of familiarity in the classic styling of for example the silver plated Carriage Clock or the, Galileo Desk Pad, and reassurance in the quality of items like the premium leather range or the sterling silver collection. All our items can be engraved with your logo and promotional message using our in-house diamond engraving.

Why not add individually engraved or embrossed names to really create that personal touch. Call 0845 430 2902 for more details.


Get ready for recovery

 Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Get ready for recovery
Is it? Isn’t it?
Will it? Won’t it?
Is the worst of the recession over and are we getting ready for the long awaited recovery? Who knows? If I did, I wouldn’t be writing this blog – I would be sitting on a beach in the Bahamas. In these times of uncertainly, if you can be sure of one thing- it’s the businesses that are prepared for the recovery that will most benefit from it. So what can you do to get your company ship shape to take advantage of all the undoubted opportunities that will be coming your way?
Here are our top ten heads up
1. Review – be honest dispassionate; look at where the business is now and where it needs to be in the future.
2. Cut supply cost – look at your whole supply chain: look for new suppliers offering better deals, re-negotiate with existing suppliers, and buy strategically with fewer suppliers rather than add hoc with lots.
3. Cash is king-tighten credit controls, use whatever leverage you can and monitor regularly.
4.Cut OK costs-concentrate on areas with the most savings, get staff ideas (they often are closes to spending waste) and be ruthless with “nice to have” costs.
5. Cut stock-keep your inventory to a minimum-convert old stock to cash, and reduce slow moving lines.
6. Staff-think outside the box regarding job roles and personnel. Keep and reward that add value to your business, and clean out those that don’t.
7. Processes- examine your procedures and invest in more efficient processes. Look for duplication and bottlenecks.
8. Outsource? A great way to make a fixed cost into a flexible one. But make sure it’s right for the business.
9. Location-not a realistic option for some businesses, but huge costs can be sauced by moving departments/functions abroad or even elsewhere in the UK.
10. Look after key customers-get closer to your customers, offer real value, and keep them interested and talking to you. Make judicial use of emailers, direct mail, face to face and sales promotion. The Corporate Gifts Co can supply executive incentives from; sterling silver to clocks and from USB drives to desk accessories. Call today on 0845 430 2902


STERLING SILVER

 Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

STERLING SILVER
The hallmark of quality; how often you heard that phrase? So why is the hallmark synonymous with the concept of quality?
Hallmarking precious metals was one of the very first instances of consumer protection in history; devised in Birmingham, England as a means of verifying the quality of the material goods were made of and protecting consumers from unscrupulous traders – not much has changed has it?
As silver plate is essentially a thin layer of sterling silver on top of a base metal such as brass or zinc alloy, it is difficult for the layman to tell the difference. The hallmark therefore, is indisputable proof that an item is made from sterling silver or another precious metal.
The hallmark is made up of symbols that denote; the year it was made, the assay office it was verified at, the maker, and the grade of precious metal. Most common are 925 silver, 9ct, 18ct and 24ct gold.
The Corporate Gifts Company have a comprehensive collection of sterling silver promotional items from business card cases to bookmarks and from photo frames to paperweights. All can be diamond engraved using our in – house engraving facility. We can also design special commissions and bespoke items in sterling silver and solid gold such as; cufflinks and corporate jewellery or keyrings and personal accessories. Our in – house design team can supply FOC visuals – just ask the sales team.