Increase Brand Awareness with Event Giveaways

Planning a company-wide event or even an industry-wide event like a trade show can be a lot of work. In this blog post, you can learn some tips and tricks we have gathered together to help make your next event a successful one. There are certain things you can do before and after the event to ensure that you can increase your brand awareness. Plus, you might even enjoy some noticeable customer loyalty and overall long-term customer retention if you follow up after your event.

What is brand awareness?

First of all, it is important to define what exactly brand awareness is before you can increase it. Brand awareness is defined as the extent to which customers are familiar with the distinctive image and other qualities of that specific brand, product or service. There are many things that fully make up an overall brand, like a color, a specific color or color set, font, style, name and general feeling to name a few. In order to get new customers to choose your service, or even to keep customer loyalty up, it is important to spread your brand around to increase more awareness, impressions, customers and ultimately sales.

What is customer loyalty?

Customer loyalty is the idea that customers will continue to come back to your brand or service for repeat transactions. For companies, customer loyalty is the various strategies they use to ensure customers will be frequently their business for a long time. That means, finding new ways to keep customers satisfied to ensure the customers will keep coming back for repeat purchases and also building relationships.

What is the difference between brand awareness and customer loyalty?

Brand awareness is used in all steps of gaining new customers whereas customer loyalty is mostly focused on keeping the already existing customers coming back and back again. While they are different concepts, the idea of using promotional materials works for both. Maximize your reach to new customers through promotional items at places like career fairs and festivals or create more customer loyalty by sending out client gifts and other high-end promotional items.

Before the Event

In order to have a successful event, there are some steps you should follow and actions you should take to ensure it goes smoothly. Before and during the event is the perfect time to increase your brand awareness with these helpful tips.

1. Consider your target audience

Event marketing is a great tool to keep in your brand’s toolbox, however, you want to make sure you make the most of it. Customize a professional event that targets your specific audience. This professional event is a chance for you to showcase your products and services so you want to make sure the right people are listening and seeing what you offer. For example, if you are hosting a large event for every college student on campus, it would make more sense to hand out promo items that are useful for a college student, like pens or notebooks. It would make more sense, that if you are ordering a large amount, you should consider a more cost-effective price per unit or product rather than a more expensive item.

2. Convey emotions

Giving a promotional item should make people feel something otherwise, your message hasn’t really gotten across. When choosing a product, consider how the recipient might feel. People are more likely to remember your brand’s name if the product can be used over and over versus something people might not want and immediately throw away. In most cases, choose products that are functional and practical to see a larger impact.

3. Presentation matters

Once you have selected and ordered your products, you could hand them out as is. However, if you want to really elevate your message, consider a nicer or even a more personal presentation. That could mean you unpack your promo item from the box and put it in your own specially designed goodie bag. For example, if you ordered some tote bags with your logo on it, you could consider packing smaller items into that bag. It would be a fun and memorable way to present your corporate gifts versus just handing out a plain product. Your audience is more likely to remember you if you create something unique. You could also set up little raffle games or other promotional giveaways to present different ways of receiving these products.

After the Event

Now that you have had your event and you met new clients or customers, here are some tips to focus on customer retention.

1. Send thank you cards

A great way to make an even bigger impression on your future customers is by sending a follow up thank you card or note for attending the event. This will convey a more personal connection with everyone you met at the event and therefore, can translate into a higher customer retention and overall loyalty. Adding a small gift to the thank you card might also be another way to show how much you care and appreciate the new connection that was made.

2. Create exclusive offers and coupons

Another great way to keep customers coming back to your products, store or service is to offer them a good deal. As a follow up, you could also send out exclusive codes to the connections you made during the event. Sending out these deals and promo codes after the event shows that you are still thinking about the people you met during the event and are hoping to continue to work with them in the future.

3. Send out customer satisfaction surveys

In order to push your brand or company even further, it will help to get feedback from your customers, clients, partners and often even your employees. This is a great opportunity to ask for feedback from others to see how you can better your products or service. Through this, you can learn about the ways you are doing well and the areas that could use some improvement. When people feel like they are heard and they can make an impact, they are more likely to become a repeat visitor. Consider making some of these changes to show that your customer and client opinions matter.

So what do you think? Did any of these tips spark your imagination about how you can not only increase brand awareness but also focus on long-term customer retention and loyalty? If so, feel free to reach out to our sales or customer success team via our contact form for more information. Also, if you want to stay in the loop with upcoming events, promotions, sales, coupons and more, register for our newsletter today.