Creative gift ideas for your business

As I write this blog in October, it feels about as Christmassy as building a sandcastle with shells for windows and your Magnum lolly stick for a flag pole.

But this is the perfect time to get yourself organised for a spot of well-thought out seasonal gifting – for clients, for your team, for suppliers, or you know, just for yourself. Go on, you’re worth it.

Gifts tend to fall into two categories. The ‘Oh my god, you shouldn’t have!’ gifts, so delightful and surprising that the recipient is utterly charmed. And then the ‘oh my god, you really shouldn’t have’ gifts… you know, the ones that are so predictable and dull the recipient is doubting they even have the nerve to immediately regift it to miserable Aunt Edith.

I’m here to give you some inspiration on the former gift category for your business. Because your gift, whilst being a lovely way to say thank you, or merry Christmas, is an experience for the recipient. An experience that can reflect well on your brand, reinforcing your values and approach and leaving a lingering, positive impression long after the hastily purchased yuletide chocolates ever would.

Help them have a fabulous 2025. Create a branded, beautifully designed resource that gives your recipient some of your expertise to help them create a great new year. A checklist for healthy habits, a workbook to help them manage their personal finances, a short course of audio meditations, a download on key trends in their industry they should be aware of. Think about what they would value, and can’t get hold of elsewhere, which will showcase your brilliance too.

Make it personal. Send a branded Christmas card, but inside just carries a QR code. That code leads to a personalised video message from you. Give them 60 seconds of seasonal greetings, a recap on a fabulous year, a terrible Christmas cracker joke or you and your team singing a Christmas banger. Or stretch the budget to a video card, so your message can be played from the comfort of their mantlepiece for the whole of Christmas. It’ll be one not to forget…

Who doesn’t love popping something branded in their mouth? You can get branded biscuits, slabs of chocolate with your brand printed in the middle, and even branded Mentos. Or maybe personalised Marmite labels that you can stick on your own jars, for the lovers out there? Larger branded merchandise companies can have large minimum orders, so look on places like Etsy for small businesses who will cater for creating small runs of these things.  

Open up a secret door for your VIPers (or create a Santa’s grotto). If you have a course, or a paid-for service that they haven’t experienced, you could gift your VIP clients access to some or all of it for free as a seasonal thank you for their custom. You could time-limit it (free access for the whole of January) or gate-off a part just for them in a lovely tinsel-strewn virtual grotto (lifetime access to Module 1). Of course, the fact that they might love it so much then they want to buy the rest of it is mere coincidence.

Give the gift of laughter. Or more accurately, the gift of groaning. Not all gifts have to cost you one of your limbs. Create a Christmas joke swap. Send a terrible joke to each of your clients - you can print them onto slips of paper and include with your Christmas cards, gift wrap them on their own and pop them in the post, or send as an email, and then invite them to send you back their best / most groanworthy one. Oh, how we all laughed, and you ended up with some funny social content for the run-up to Christmas.

Use your network. Find the small businesses in your network that create gifts, rather than the big online shops. Or maybe, you can collaborate with a number of small businesses and each contribute a gift or offer, which you can bundle into a digital or actual hamper.

Invite them to escape with you. Not as presumptuous as it perhaps sounds. There is nothing quite like a shared experience to cement those client or team relationships, so how about an escape room experience? And there are plenty of virtual escape rooms where you can gather a team without anyone having to leave their armchair or take their slippers off.  Search up online escape rooms – some are only around £30 for a team, and you can get Christmas themed ones too. Just don’t leave your client in there by accident.

Curate a culture shelf for everyone to browse. Many of your clients or team will be having some time off over the holiday, so why not help them fill some down time with a collection of your favourite books, films, podcasts, YouTubers, music or TV shows. Create your digital shelf as a downloadable guide, create it as a landing page or find another creative way to allow people to browse. Be a culture vulture or media mongrel, whichever you prefer.

So there are seven ideas to help you not send a boring gift from your business this year. Decide what you want to gift, get it sorted, compile your list and get it done. Then you can gift yourself a right sense of smugness come December, when everyone else is making panic orders for cheap chocolates, crack open the Baileys / Celebrations / Easy Peelers and relax as you delight your clients from a distance.

If you want some inspiration for gifts that encourage creative thinking, check out the blog 9 gifts to inspire creativity.