Conceiving a business idea is essentially the first step in launching your business. It then involves a number of important steps to get your business running. Promoting your business is one of these subsequent steps that needs due attention. However good prospects you see and however well-planned your business is, if you do not follow a good promotional strategy, your business would not survive in today's highly competitive market. Promoting business is basically selling your ideas and prospects across the potential customers/consumers and the best way to promote a business is definitely through advertisements. Presently advertisement market approximates around $400 billion and may reach up to $500 billion by 2010. Advertisements are made over a host of media. Newspapers, magazines, TV/movie commercials, websites, sample products, gifts etc are some prominent ones that we are used to.

Offering promotional gift is found to be a good advertising strategy in introducing a new product or a newer version of an existing product. People have a natural affinity to the word ?gift? and business and commercial companies know it very well. Companies, especially those in the consumer market, spend millions of dollars in offering promotional gifts that bear the advertisement of the company or the product on them.

In our daily lives, we feel grateful and somewhat obliged to a person who presents or sends us a gift. This universal effect of presenting gifts is also applied to consumers or potential customers who naturally feel an urge to use the products being promoted. Investment in promotional gifts is huge and given the output of increased sales, the investment is considered to be highly profitable. For example, a toothpaste that offers a toothbrush free in its package see a soaring sale just for the promotional gift.

Promotional gifts are offered in a variety of ways. Business companies provide promotional gifts as free samples usually at the launching of a new product or product version. These are usually given ?absolutely free? with no purchase obligations. Such gifts are given in shopping malls, departmental stores and places from where the product is planned to be launched for deliberate sales in future.

Some promotional gifts are given in the form of items that we need frequently in our life ? like a pen, paper-weight, an umbrella, a T-shirt or a cap. While the gift does not match the original product being promoted, they usually have the product or company's name printed on it ? a common advertising technique.

Another way of offering promotional gifts is through ?3 in the price of 2? ? or ?buy 2 and get 1 free? strategy. This type of promotional gifts attaches a buying obligation to have the free gift. Some products though follow a slightly different way by offering ?if you like it ? you may keep it? or ?complete money-back guarantee? techniques.

Promotional gifts are not limited to products only. They are offered in the same manners above for services too. Customers usually need to sign up for a service for a particular time to enjoy the free service.

For businessmen, offering a promotional gift is very important and one must need to understand the gift's commercial output thoroughly in view of the psyche of targeted customers/consumers.

For consumers/customers on the other hand, one has to remember that however attractive or alluring, it is always wise to accept a promotional gift after you have a clear idea about the strings attached to it.