Giveaway Marketing: 5 Ideas to Get the Best Results With Your Free Items

It’s no secret that brands are offering free gifts with purchase to their customers in exchange for the opportunity to promote their name and encourage repeat sales. When done right, this strategy can definitely bring a lot of benefits to your business. Let us help you get the best results with your giveaway marketing through this blog!

Giveaway marketing is a simple concept yet a powerful strategy. It can take many forms, from contests and sweepstakes to free samples and promotions.

It can be an especially effective tool since it appeals to a wide audience of potential buyers and gives you the chance to build relationships with them through thoughtful brand experiences.

A Free Mahjong Tile for Good Luck

We all love getting free stuff. But why?

Because we’re human beings! We’re wired to want things, and when we get them for free, especially if they’re things we wouldn’t normally buy — we feel lucky and special.

And that’s what we feel exactly every time we make a purchase in this milk tea shop in China.

Even though it has no direct connection to a lucky charm and is not tied into any in-store promotion, we learned that the milk tea shop offers a Mahjong tile for every purchase of their product to wish good luck to their customers.

It may seem small, but receiving this good luck charm makes us feel good about buying from that particular shop.

We love how it provides something tangible to focus on other than negative thoughts or feelings – definitely making our day as we stepped out from its location.

Not to mention that, unlike other good luck charms that are luxurious in appearance, this Mahjong tile is easy to carry around our purses or pockets.

Mahjong is the most popular game in China. It is a game of skill and chance, where players attempt to match open pairs of identical tiles.

It is often played in public places like restaurants, cafes and tea houses. People love to play Mahjong because it helps them relax and unwind after a long day at work or school.

Top 5 Ideas to Get the Best Results With Your Free Items

No matter how small or big your custom giveaway item is, it is essential to take full advantage of its capability to boost brand exposure, attract potential customers, convert them into paying customers (or leads) and retain them over time.

If you don’t pay attention, you could miss out on significant opportunities that could help your business grow.

Let’s take this promotional Mahjong tile, for example. Here are some ideas that we can recommend to maximize your free items:

1. Collectible Gift With Purchase

Mahjong tiles are beautiful collectable merchandise that you can offer customers as they come in different sizes, colours and designs.

Producing an attractive customized set of this game can definitely catch the attention of its avid players or mere collectors.

By setting expectations on what they can get from the collectable promotion, you can encourage repeat sales as well as reach a broader range of audiences.

2. Exchange Offer

Exchange offers are a type of sales promotion tool companies use to lure customers into buying their products.

The idea behind an exchange offer is simple: Buy one item and get another, similar item for free or at a reduced price.

Exchange offers can take different forms depending on the type of product being sold.

When it comes to Mahjong tiles, they can act as a token that customers can present in-store for a discount for their next visit.

3. Gamify Free Item With Purchase

People love attending promotional events because they are a great way to network, learn, and entertain.

You can also use these tiles by giving them out as a special offer GWP that customers can use as a free pass during events that you hold at your place of business.

Such as tournaments or game nights where players can also win free drinks or food from participating in the event.

This will help make your events more fun for everyone involved, which will hopefully result in more people coming back for more events like this in the future!

4. Build Up Loyalty Program

These tiles can be used in many different ways to build loyalty programs.

One way to use these tiles is by giving them out as a token such as when someone reaches their goal or gets a certain amount of points within the program.

The member could also receive a certain number of these tiles every time they come into your business or play in one of your events.

Which they can later on use to redeem incentive merchandise.

5. Integrate Quick Response Codes

If you are looking for a fun way to present your brand or let people know about your products and services, then you might love to consider adding a QR code to your Mahjong tiles.

This can be an innovative call-to-action marketing strategy that can help you reach more people by simply giving away well-designed Mahjong tiles.

You can also integrate it into the branded packaging box when you offer Mahjong sets as premium giveaway items.

Take a look at how other brands from different industries have utilised Mahjong in their promotions:

In alignment with their campaign of spending the year of the tiger happy together, Coca-Cola offered branded game merchandise, a limited-edition Hong Kong Mahjong set as the primary customer incentive idea. Read the full story here:

Drinking beer and playing a customised game like Mahjong is something that goes well together, and we love how Blue Girl beer has taken advantage of this opportunity to include this in its beer promotion strategy.

Seeing the beer promotion above from Blue Girl beer reminded us of this purchase with purchase promotion we featured before from San Miguel in Hong Kong.

This in-store promotion idea from the brand involved a unique point-of-sale display and giving away a branded Mahjong set!

Back in 2016, customers received a free Guinness Mahjong Set with every purchase of Guinness’s Foreign Extra beer crates. How does this offer elevated the brand’s St. Patrick’s Day promotion? Read more about it here:

DBS Bank Ltd is a bank incorporated in Singapore and has more than 100 branches that can be found island-wide. In 2013, the bank came up with an innovative way to encourage more people to bank with them with a custom Mahjong set. Here’s how!

The China Construction Bank, the second-largest bank in the world by market capitalization offered a tiered promotion to its new customers offering exquisite Mahjong sets or cash rebates way back in 2011. What made this promotion successful? Read our article:

Similar to Mahjong, Domino is a tile-based game in which players attempt to score points by playing matching tiles on an open layout.

You can also use this branded game idea to revamp your giveaway marketing strategy. Check out how brands leverage the domino game on their promotional stunts:

Take a read and discover the unique aspect of this branded domino set by Disney! What made this promotion a total buzz in the market?

Kaufland, a German hypermarket chain once came up with a clever marketing strategy relating to the Movie Ice Age 4. Read the full article:

Cockburn’s Port, one of the world’s top brands of Portuguese fortified wine, offered a special promotion in the UK Tesco stores back in 2011. Check out how the brand smoothly incorporated a domino set into its GWP offer.

How Can ODM Help?

We know that your promotional products have to speak for themselves. You want them to make a significant impact, and you also want them to ensure that your brand is recognised.

We at ODM, together with our POS design agency, Mindsparkz, work with our clients with this in mind, knowing how important it is to develop suitable merchandise ideas for your marketing campaigns and promotions. With years of experience in the industry, we are highly skilled and capable of meeting your every need.

Contact us today to get started on developing a product that will go above and beyond your expectations!

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