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How I Gave Away 15 Minutes and Made $5700
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What Apple Can Teach You About Marketing
September 11, 2007 | Written By Mason Hipp
J. Darius Bikoff, the Founder and CEO of Glacéau, once said to me that he’ll give a free bottle of Vitaminwater to anyone who hasn’t tried it before. He said his product is so good, that once they have a taste he knows they’ll be back for more.
What are you giving away that shows how good your product or service is?
Having an irresistible free trial offer is one of the best things you can do for your marketing campaign. Read more to find out why.
You probably wouldn’t buy a car without first taking a test drive. By the same token, how can you expect someone to buy your product or service without trying it? Even further still: what does it say about your product if you aren’t willing to let people try it before buying?
Giving out an irresistible trial offer is a sign of good will. It shows that you care about your customers and that you want to make sure they’re a good fit before they buy. It also shows that you really believe in your product.
Not only that, a good offer will skyrocket your conversion rates—it’s the best way to take people from being mildly interested to being a long term customer. And when they actually do buy, people will have a much better idea about what you’re selling, so you’ll have happier customers.
A free giveaway is a good idea even from a purely selfish point of view. Holding a contest for an irresistible prize can be a great way to generate buzz. You only have to give out one or two great offers to gain exposure to hundreds (even thousands) of people.
An offer becomes irresistible when the benefit of receiving it far outweighs any difficulty involved getting it. The best offers come from people who really believe in their product or service, and are dying to introduce it to new people. They are willing to go out of their way to prove how great their stuff really is. The fact that they believe in themselves shows through, and it makes people a whole lot more likely to buy from them.
It can be hard to stomach giving away money or time, but if the best you can do is a measly 10% off coupon, you aren’t going to get very far. It pays to go the extra mile and let people really see how generous your company can be.
But generosity isn’t all of it, you also want to make sure your offer serves a point. Giving out shoe polish might be nice, but it isn’t going to show anything about your company (unless you’re actually in that business). The closer your free giveaways come to your actual business, the better. Actual trial offers and test drives usually work the best.
Now get out there and come up with something good to give away, I promise your company will be better off for it.
Mason,
I agree, it can be a very powerful tactic. One example from my industry is designers who give away a free template or maybe a WordPress theme. It draws some attention and hopefully brings in some customers who want more.
My comment via a recent blog post:
Give Away the Gold ... but keep the mine. As I read through a blog article, Hook Potential Clients By Offering Something Irresistible, the idea of giving away the “Gold” which represents the greatest value to the potential customer while keeping ownership of the mine, the producer of those valued gold nuggets, was another way of “showing how good your product or service is”. The key for you as a small or home based business owner is to be able to distinguish the Fool’s Gold from the real Gold. If you don’t, you can bet your customer won’t return to mine to purchase some of your real Gold.
Steven - Yep, exactly right. Free tempates are great way to get a name for yourself as a web designer. The thing to watch out for is becoming too engrossed in designeing your free templates, as opposed to your for-profit versions.
Don - Great analogy. As you put it though, I wouldn’t recommend giving away fool’s gold. It could be trouble if you’re looking to get customers to come back.
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