When you are in the business of selling a product or service, it can be very beneficial to offer something free. One of the major benefits of doing so, is to exchange the free product for an email address, allowing you to build your email marketing list quite easily.
This is a great way to increase sales, whether you give away something extra with each order, offer free shipping, or use the freebie as an enticement to make a future purchase and opt-in to your customer newsletter, this is a way of attracting people to take action.
Many websites gain a lot of traffic by promoting a Free Information Product with the hope that visitors will also buy once they cash in on the complimentary offer.
Types Of Free Information Products To Give Away
Whatever type of item you offer for free, make sure that it directly relates to your business. For instance, giving away a cookbook to visitors of a website that sells sports equipment is probably not a good fit. However, offering a free DVD of famous sports figures giving advice on the best brands of gear could be a great way to get visitors to shop around your site and ultimately buy your products.
The list of things you can offer as freebies that cost you little or nothing is nearly endless. Take a look through this list to get some ideas for things to add value to your customers’ experience.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
• E-book – write a short Ebook in .pdf format that goes over industry advice, lists product reviews, is a how -to guide, or a manual that offers tips for making someone’s life easier with your product, for overcoming a problem, for increasing sales, etc. Even a short work of fiction might be applicable for your business.
• Industry Report – such things as real estate market figures, stock market updates, survey results, or interesting statistics related to a particular industry all offer information people need.
• Consumer Guide –how to shop for a particular item, what to look for in a quality product, types of warranties typically offered, where to go for consumer help, etc.
• Subscriptions – you could offer a free issue to anyone buying a periodical or magazine subscription. You might also offer a free subscription to your regular company newsletter.
• Promotional Items – there are a variety of online printers that offer freebies to new customers, amass enough and you have plenty of items you can pass along to your customers.
• DVD or CD – you can easily create one yourself and burn it on a recordable media or offer it for download from your website. Just be sure the material you use is not copyrighted by someone else.
• Consulting – particularly if you are in the business of selling a service, such as website design or tax accounting, offering a free consultation is a great way to entice customers.
These are just a few of the things you can offer that will cost you little or nothing at all. The important thing is that people will feel they are getting something of value from you and you can continue to work on selling to them in the future.
Promote Your Offer
Everyone is attracted by the word “free”, so offering Free Information Products is a great way to promote your e-commerce website and get visitors to convert to customers.
Make sure your complimentary offer is prominently displayed on the home page of your website or on the landing page for a pay-per-click advertising campaign. Include the offer in email marketing to your database as well and don’t forget to do some social media campaigning for additional SEO value as well.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2012
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
Yes we all like free offers, some of them can be good.
One thing to make sure of in the emails you send out after the person has received their freeby is have an opt out, for the consumer as I have had to send emails to the spam bucket as I haven’t been able find an opt out when I am no longer interested or it was not what I expected
Rita
Hi Sean,
Again, these ideas definitely give me food for thought. I guess the hardest thing is to find something original that will suit your niche. I think some things would work better than others, so I’d have to try a few different things.
I think Yahoo Answers would be a good place to look for problems that people are having in our niches. Maybe we could write a free report solving their problems if there were enough questions consistently asked.