Have you noticed that people are demanding more and more for free in the market today?
Think back a few years and what you used to get for free was advertising. I’m not talking about the advertiser but the consumer. The only free thing that you received was an advertisement asking you to buy something. So what’s happened?
With the rise and rise of the internet, consumers are demanding more and more for free. But in order to capture the potential customer’s attention there needs to be a higher and higher value of free.
There seems to me to be four different levels of free that you can use in your business to gain and retain potential customer’s attention
- GIVE SOMETHING TO READ: The earliest version of this is a newsletter and we can all remember the early websites where you left your name and email to get the monthly newsletter. Now many people opt out of newsletters because it’s something they don’t read and therefore is of little value to them. A more valuable free is an e-book where you get something quite lengthy and potentially more valuable but many people simply do not read today because they’re used to being entertained and have moved to listening or watching as their primary means of taking in information.
- GIVE SOMETHING TO SEE: Videos or voice over presentations are now easy to make and can bring far more value than static words on a page. Visual stimulation often brings more value and you can identify more strongly with the message being given. It also lets you see more of what’s on offer.
- GIVE SOMETHING TO LISTEN TO: Podcasts have become a very popular way of receiving information because you can take information in while doing other things (like your daily exercise) Time is such a premium for people that it is fast becoming of more value than money. So bringing something which has a flexible time element to it will have a higher value than something which requires a set time like a free webinar.
- GIVE SOMETHING TO DO: Free online tools and calculators have a high value because consumers can actually interact and get specific variable results from which they can make decisions. This has a high value for the consumer but also a high value for the provider because the two way feed back can be used as a form of qualification on both sides of the fence and save time in the selling process.
What ever you decided to provide as free in your business, make sure it is valuable to your potential customers because if it is not, they will simply ignore you.
Please let me know of your success stories regarding free in your business.
So true.
We’ve seen much much higher opt-in rates by offering free software (better than newsletters, webinars, podcasts, and free reports previously).
And so do others we work with.
Good points. The free line has moved amazingly now. We are giving away info for free in one of my businesses knowing that people are too lazy to actually take the information and use it. What they do therefore is ask us to implement.
I have been aware for a long time that people expect more value for free. The 30 Day Challenge is what got me thinking about this…a month (&soon to be 3 months) of high quality training for free. Does appear to be paying off!
I got to this webpage via a tweet from @EugeneWare and I’m very glad I came. Brilliant short *free* blog-post!
I used to co-write & co-produce a free newsletter on NLP in the London area and in the UK, “Living NLP”, & also gave my time to co-produce & present free weekly evening NLP workshops. As a result I was looked up to by more people than I probably deserved.
As a consequence I built up tremendous confidence in my abilities and it was an experience I wouldn’t change for anything.
And I could go back to doing it again any time if I wanted to cash in on the experience. Free rocks, and coaches who put it down are fools. Or perhaps just a bit ignorant about the ways of the world…