Free Content For Profit and Cheap Shots of Vodka
December 15th, 2007If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also sign up for my extremely popular FREE newsletter by clicking HERE. Thanks for visiting!
One of the myths that I hear a lot online is that it simply isn’t possible to make money by giving away free content, and that if you education your userbase to expect valuable information for zero cost, then you’ll have a fantastically hard job subsequently selling to these customers.
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth, and this is advice could be dangerous to your business.
Giving away free content in almost any niche will help you earn the trust and respect of your target market, and will ultimately make the act of selling that much easier.
It took me a long time to understand this in the teaching niche, but when I finally grasped the power of earning trust through the zero cost content that I provide, the results were astonishing.
If you give your target customers content for free, then a relationship will be built and many pre sale barriers will be removed.
Here’s an important point though….
A few years ago I went on holiday to a pretty ‘cheesy’ beach resort in Spain. Many of the local bars gave away free shots of local alcohol in an attempt to get you into their bar where they would subsequently try and sell you more expensive drinks for the rest of the night.
In fact, this policy of giving away free shots as a loss leader was so prevalent that almost every bar on the beach front followed the same policy. The result? Well, we usually setup camp in the first bar that offered us freebies and then proceeded to spend our measly allowances on beer and cocktails.
The bar had earned our trust, we were grateful for the freebie, and we were happy to give them the rest of our money for the next few days.
We spent money on beer, cocktails, and bar food, but did anyone spend money on any more cheap shots? Of course not, because you could get cheap shots for free anywhere on the strip!
My point is that giving away free content can be a potent strategy for business growth BUT sometimes you have to be careful about the content that you choose to provide for free.
The bars in Spain had educated the local market that shots of vodka should be free of charge, and subsequently no one would ever consider paying for one. Likewise, if I had given away Auction Profits Unleashed, then it would have been subsequently difficult to sell Auction Secret Profits as I would have educated my market to expect such content for free.
Earn the trust of your target market through the most incredible free content that you can muster, but you must simultaneously protect and maintain the value of the premium content that you subsequently hope to sell.
And here’s something else to ponder too. On the Spanish strip EVERY bar gave away a free shot as a profit seducing loss leader meaning that you had to do something really special to stand out from the crowd.
The bar that we spent the bulk of our time in didn’t give away free cheap shots of vodka…they gave away bottles of Champaign if you were in a group of 6 or more!
Now, I just prefer Beer if I’m honest but when someone offers you free Champaign you’re not going to say no are you?!
Giving away free content to earn the trust of your market, while also protecting and enhancing the value of your premium material, is a tricky balance to maintain. And this balance gets a lot tougher too when people in your market start handing out the equivalent of free Champaign!
Start giving away the good stuff today but make sure that in doing so you don’t compromise the perceived value of your premium offerings or your generosity will be counter productive.
And if you get to the point where everyone else is giving away similar free content? Well, then it’s time to find the Champaign of your market and give that away too (as long as it doesn’t undermind the value of what you subsequently hope to sell of course!)
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