Many businesses like to give their clients/customers, referral sources and even good prospects gifts. Some of course like to do that for the holidays, others feel gift giving can be given at any time.

The question is what makes a good business gift? My counsel to our clients is that a good business gift, even those given with a very altruistic motive, should have a business return on your investment. Of course, there are going to be situations when you want to give a gift that is going to be quickly consumed and forgotten (e.g. drop by a bottle of wine) but overall businesses should look for gifts that have longer “shelf life” or sustainability.

We of course help some of our clients with all sorts of yummy gift baskets which are great. But we also try to encourage them to consider alternative gifts that someone will hang on to resulting in them seeing your brand daily or weekly for months or years. The latter type gift we would suggest has much higher return on investment.

Let’s break down what happens with a really yummy food gift basket. At most businesses one of two things happens…either the receiver shares the basket with co-workers and the yummy stuff is gobbled up in a matter of hours or a day or two. Or the recipient quickly removes the basket to their car for transport home. And then the goodies are quickly consumed by family members.

In either scenario, my favorite adage applies, “out of sight means out of mind when it comes to referrals and repeat transactions”. If your gift basket is gobbled up in say a day (or less)…you are back to out of sight, giving you a low return on your investment, because in 2-3 weeks, is anyone going to remember that basket of goodies or your business.

Conversely, if you had spent the same amount of money and given the same executive (or the top executives) a nice quality gift, for example a leather gift item (coasters, pad folio, bookmark…) that might be something that is used and kept around for years. And it has high marketing value because your company brand stays visible.

Giving good gifts is easy if you have a marketing partner that is in tune to helping you get a high return on your marketing investment!