Top 10 Places to Hand Out Promotional Gifts

So you have a great batch of promotional gifts to hand out, but you aren't entirely sure WHERE to hand these out. No matter what type of promo you are running, here are 10 location ideas for you to make your branding mark.
1. Career Fairs - This is a great way to reach the younger marketplace, whether you are actively looking for employees or if you just want a very easy way to get a feel on how they will receive your business. Promotional key chains, pens, and notepads work best here.
2. Reception Lobby – If you have a room in your business for receiving clients or customers (or a retail section of a store) liberally pepper it with promotional gifts of yours. Again, smaller promo items work best here – especially pens if you have lots of paperwork to fill out.
3. Malls and Local Businesses – Work the local angle, whether your target market is actually around your business's physical location. You never know when your next big lead might come from – but if you're active in promoting yourself around the community, then you'll start off a spread of word of mouth promotion that could pay off greatly.

4. Local Events – As with local businesses, if you show that you are involved in the community at local fairs, sports events, and other local events, you show that you really want to be a part of the community. This will help you have an easier time with local government should you run into any issues, as well as keeping your business safe and secure. You will also attract better job candidates with people who are loyal to the community and those that are involves with said community. Just show you care – and get some good karma sent your way.
5. Trade Shows – Become a prominent force in your industry by setting up booths at trade shows, getting on panels as a guest speaker, or just making some contacts. No business can act as an isolated island in this day and age – business is just too global for that to happen. You might as well take advantage of the shift by jumping on this opportunity for self promotion.
6. Consumer Conventions – As with trade shows, consumer conventions (if they are applicable to your industry) give you a great opportunity to find out what your customer really thinks about your business. Is it good, bad, or have they never even heard about what you do? Take this chance to educate potential customers on how you can make their lives easier.
7. Magazines – Many magazines will gladly send out special promotional gifts as inserts or a bonus offer. Freebies drive up magazines sales, and since all they have to do is pack it in, that's like free money for them. Plus, they can provide all sorts of targeted demographics about the people subscribing – invaluable information when targeting your promotional product campaign.
8. Business Partners – Don't underestimate the value of brand reinforcement on your current clients and business partners. A promotional gift here and there can help to spread word of your company throughout their own, setting off a domino effect of word of mouth promotions.

9. Vacations – Everyone takes vacations – so take advantage of hot vacation spots around your town to leave a few promotional items, or you can even leave them at places you take vacations at.
10. Website – If you don't have a website, stop and go get one right now! Offering freebies for surveys, first time orders, and other incentives to get the customer to reach out and talk to you work very well for whatever purpose you would like to use them for.

Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet, the UK's largest online source of promotional gifts and promotional items. He has taken the UK gift market by storm by the application of modern business thinking and the latest search engine marketing techniques. For more details on promotional gifts visit www.ideasbynet.com