Free Offers Can Mean More Money
Author: Bernadette Doyle
If you've tried direct mail and advertising and it didn't work for you, fine tune and adjust your advertising and mailings to make them produce results. One method that I've found that makes an ad or mailing successful is to offer specific free items; a report, a tele-seminar or e-books.
I've heard from many of you that you've tried direct mail or lead generation advertising and didn't see instant results. There's a learning curve with direct response advertising and you're not always going to get a flood of business from your first ad or mailing. By fine tuning and testing, you're going to find the messages that you can rely on to bring in a certain number of inquiries. Once you have this message, it's going to produce going forward, it's not a one time-deal.
Why Free Offers Work
When you're offering a free report, you're giving people something tangible to ask for. You're giving them a specific task and they're going to be more responsive than a general 'call for further information' request.
I've tested this myself. I ran an advertisement in a trade magazine and offered a phone number to call for further information. The next time that I ran the ad; I offered a free report for callers. There was a significant increase in the number of inquiries.
By offering this free report, you're not only giving a specific 'call to action', you're taking one more step to establishing yourself as an expert in your field.
What NOT to offer.
Well, let's start with what NOT to offer as a freebie. Products that take your time and only offer the one-to-one marketing approach are not cost effective and have limited sales potential. This includes free consultations.
They're time consuming and they're taking your time from other projects and prospects. Change your one-to-one marketing to one-to-many. For example, that free consultation would reach significantly more people if it's offered as a tele-seminar.
It's also known that when you offer anything for free, you're going to attract a certain number of people who just want the freebie. They're never going to buy from you, no matter what. If you're offering a consultation, you've lost a chunk of your time and it's not going to pay off for you. By offering a one-to-many product, you've significantly cut your losses with these bargain hunters.
What to offer
You need to focus on the one-to-many marketing techniques, particularly if you're going to offer a giveaway. These giveaways need to be low cost for you, but offer a perceived value to the prospect. A free report works well in advertisements, as do other techniques of one-to-many marketing such as tele-seminars or an electronic-book via email.
The Bottom Line
Creating advertisements and offers with unlimited potential to produce results over time will trump the hour of cold calling or one-on-one consultation that's going to yield limited results. Converting your one-to-one marketing techniques to one-to-many techniques is the key to becoming a Client Magnet.
Using free offers that have the one-to-many benefits is going to help your advertisements become more effective. Think about where you're putting your time in marketing. If you're using manual lead generators, change your methods to identify the fastest path to generate good leads. That path is going to be direct response advertising, and the use of free reports is going to make them more effective.About the Author:
Bernadette Doyle publishes her free, weekly Client Magnets newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you'd like to receive invaluable information on how you can attract clients with ease, go to
www.clientmagnets.com.
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