Why a Gift With Purchase Can Be a Very Successful Marketing Strategy For You

  • Feb 4, 2015

Have You Tested a Gift With Purchase Strategy Recently?

Austin, TX: Many of my clients come to me when they are looking for ideas to boost their sales, but few have tried a Gift With Purchase..

Many have tried price discounts of some type. 30% Off. Show Specials. Monthly Specials….. These are great ways to reduce your profit margins without adding much value.

Some have tried another failed strategy: BOGO-Buy One – Get One Free. (which only really means half off–significantly cutting into your margins.

But few have tried Gift With Purchase –which creates an excellent opportunity for you.

Gift With Purchase.

Gift With Test Drive.

Gift With Visiting our Open House.

These strategies help you to retain your full prices by giving something totally unrelated to your offering that adds value to the equation.

Let me give you a few examples of Gift With Purchase:

1) Around the Holidays, the cologne and perfume companies offer free imprinted logo towels or logo teddy bears with the purchase of a larger sized fragrance gift set. No price concessions. No coupons. Instead they value add the offering by adding greater value for a limited time offer and it works–year after year. We have been fortunate enough to have been a part of many of these programs and I know they work.

2) I had a client trying to increase the number of test drives they did in January and they offered an imprinted power charger with each test drive. They had tested a $25 gas card the previous January and they said they increases the number of test drives by 28%– and at a lower cost for the gift. The power chargers cost them $12 and the $25 gas card cost them $25.

3) We just did a promotion for a student apartment near a university. For the open house they offered a free imprinted selfie stick with a tour of their new facility. They followed it up 2 weeks later with a $25 Starbucks gift card. Bottom line, the showings with the free promotional selfie sticks were up 14% over the showings with the Starbucks gift card–while their cost for the selfie sticks were $7 less per gift.

4) We recently worked with a oil company on a pre-paid car wash program. In the past, they had given $5 off a 5-car wash prepaid card. At $7 per car wash – they brought in $35 upfront-minus the $5 discount and grossed $30. In November, they gave a free pair of imprinted earbuds FREE with a purchase of the prepaid car wash card. Same $35 for 5 wash – minus $3 for the logo earbuds-grossing $32 per prepaid car wash card. $2 higher profit and a 15% higher number of prepaid cards sold for the period.

Not sure a Gift With Purchase strategy will work for you?

Test it. I always suggest A/B testing on any marketing or advertising initiative.

Find a Gift With Purchase that fits your target audience–but not one that your company offers. Put your logo on it to maximize your brand exposure (something that a $25 Starbucks gift card or cash cannot offer).

Keep an open mind.

Offering a Gift With Purchase helps you to stand out from your competition.

A Gift With Purchase is fun and easy to advertise and to promote.

And Gift With Purchase promotions are usually designed to be run for a limited time only (while supplies last) so you get more immediate action taken as people know it is for a finite amount of time.

Let me know if we can help you with your next Gift With Purchase.

I’d also like to hear from others about Gift With Purchase programs that they had previously run. and what type of results you had achieved.

Happy Promoting!


  • Category: Incentive Programs
  • Tags: gift with purchase, gift with purchase promotions, gift with test drive, gift with visit