These gifts range from pens to moleskin notebooks, and then extend to decision makers being hosted in sports hospitality suites to the extreme of being hosted with your partner to an all-expenses-paid golfing or safari weekend.
Corporate gifting has long being in marketing strategies, and can be very effective in acquiring and retaining customers. However, corporate governance policies, in particular those in South Africa and the rest of Africa, are restricting the ability for employees to receive gifts as it could be seen as a bribe.
This has led to the need for B2B marketers to find alternative ways of "giving" and adding value to their leads and customers that does not contravene any policies.
Remarkable and educational content is filling this gap that has opened up. Decision makers need statistics, reports, guides and templates to build business cases and strategies, and brands that are providing this type of content to them for free are getting their attention.
Content marketing strategies, when aligned to sales stages that represent the process businesses go through when they buy products and services, can be more impactful than any corporate gift.
For example, a prospect may initially read a blog post or a PR piece that gets their attention. They then download a buyer's guide or watch a webinar to get more information, and lastly they are sent a case study or infographic showing the impact the product or service has made to other satisfied customers.
Unlike acquiring costly corporate gifts by simply finding a supplier and ordering from a catalogue, a content marketing strategy requires a much larger commitment of time and effort into online business marketing though. In some cases existing content and internet marketing strategies can just be adapted, and in others brand new content and inbound digital marketing strategies need to be created.
Changing tried and tested marketing strategies can be daunting for brands, however if brands take only 10% of the large budgets currently spent on corporate gifting to create an outstanding piece of content their leads and customers will find valuable, the evident return will provide the business case to make the change from corporate gifting to content gifting.
