The Right Way to Use Freebies to Build Your Online Business

by Bruce Carlson

Published on this site: May 5th, 2005 - See more articles from this month...

As most people know, freebies carry a lot of weight. One of the most powerful words in marketing, especially Internet marketing, is the word "free".

This little word is so powerful that even its mere presence in an email subject line sets off all kinds of alarms.

This is because, by now, most people have been "freed" to death (thanks to the accursed spam), so in certain contexts they get pretty suspicious of freebies, as they should.

But way before anybody ever thought about the possibility of computers, or an Internet, there was a saying -- "Nothing in life is free."

And when it comes to advertising we all know, deep down, that there is usually going to be something attached when that little word is thrown around.

As long as a customer perceives that there is indeed some genuine value for him or her in what is being given away they'll still grab it, however.

Giving away something for free as a part of your offer has long been considered one of the cardinal principles for selling on the Web. No matter what it is you're trying to market, you're practically considered to be nuts if you don't use freebies.

Take ezines, for example. The vast majority of ezines cost nothing. They're free. Yet many people who publish free ezines, myself included, use or have used freebies to entice people to subscribe to our ezines. It's so difficult to establish value on the Web that we actually have to give something away in order to give something away!

There's a right way and a wrong way to utilize this powerful little word "free". There is also a basic principle concerning the use of freebies in Web marketing which holds true for ANY information product, not just ezines.

In the few paragraphs that follow, I'd like to pass on a couple of simple little techniques for the effective use of freebies which will quickly result in increased sales for you and also help you to develop a new perspective and attitude about establishing value when doing business on the Web.

USE BONUSES WISELY

In order to increase your sales by using freebies you need to make sure that you use your bonuses wisely. This way you'll qualify your prospects and get people who'll want to buy. The result will be a marked increase in the percentage of prospects who convert to buyers.

Unfortunately, the Web is full of examples of how not to use bonuses. For example, how many times have you seen an ad headline that read something like this?:

Subscribe now for FREE to Joe's Ezine and get your BONUS special report!

Now there's nothing wrong with giving away a bonus report to new subscribers. But, it shouldn't be your up-front selling point. Your up-front selling point should be the benefits which your product offers your customer.

Ask yourself first, "What can my product do for my prospect?" Begin your pitch with the benefits they will receive. Some great sales letters just jump right in with a bullet list of benefits.

So you sell your prospect on your benefits first. Then, once you've convinced them that your product can indeed help them, you can "casually" mention your bonus, perhaps even as late as the P.S. to your sales letter. It could go like this:

P.S. Incidentally, when you subscribe to Joe's Ezine you'll also get my BONUS report entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Widgets But Were Afraid to Ask". This report is valued at $47, but is yours for free as a thank you for subscribing.

See? Now the freebie has some value. Since your customer has (hopefully) already decided they want what you have to offer, the freebie comes across as a true extra. That's value. And that's how you turn a larger percentage of your prospects into paying customers.

Using the freebie as bait up-front for something that's already free is not smart business. When you do this you're instantly decreasing your chances for making sales. This is because that powerful word "free" will automatically attract people with a "freebie" mentality. You may get big numbers of prospects but they'll be predisposed not to buy from you. You trigger that mindset when you dangle the freebie in front of their noses right off the bat.

Once people get into that freebie mindset it's difficult, if not impossible, to get them out of it. They will sign up to get the freebie and then keep waiting for more freebies. When they see that they're not going to get any more they'll move on. If they do end up buying from somebody it probably won't be you.

YOUR BONUS IS A SAMPLE OF YOUR LARGER PRODUCT

Another key to using freebies is to make sure that what you are offering is a sample of something larger. If you offer a free email course, for example, it should be designed to draw your prospect into one of your affiliate programs, or to sell them something through a referral, or else to pitch your ebook or some other product you have the rights to sell.

In similar fashion, if you offer a free report then the report could be a sample of your work, again to sell your ebook or other product.

Offering a free ezine is one of the most popular and best ways to get out a sample of your work, provided you have original content. Then you can package up your original content with a few extras into a larger package like an ebook and offer it for sale.

If you don't have original material, then you'll need to be patient and use your ezine as a way of establishing and building trust with a list of subscribers/prospects. This can take quite a while. But it's well worth it in the long run, especially if you enjoy publishing an ezine.

Whichever type of bonus you do decide to use, just make sure that it's a sample designed to lead toward something larger - the sale of an actual product.

And don't try to sell the huge $500 marketing course first. Start out by selling something inexpensive. The $20 - $50 range is what most marketers look at for the first sale. After that you can sell the bigger ones through follow-ups leading to "backend" sales. Oftentimes the really big sales don't come for a long time, unless you have a well-established name and reputation.

Bruce Carlson is a veteran freelance writer and educator living in Finland. Sign up for Bruce's Dynamic Copywriter newsletter today and see how easily you can improve your online copywriting and marketing skills and boost your sales!
http://www.dynamic-copywriting.com