Heels To Boot

Tokens of goodwill have always been among the building blocks of relationships, they have preceded diplomatic relations between world powers, built trust between strangers, saved many a man from the couch after a miscalculation regarding how the wife would take certain jokes about her weight.

The free gift with purchase has been a long standing tradition of the infomercial and product launch world. Free samples are employed regularly by companies the world over.

So how do we harness this when we’re on a budget? That’s the big thing, money is tight for everyone. What a lot of us forget is that what we have to give needn’t cost us money.

This article for example; it’s free to you. It does take up some time and effort on my part, and it is a result of my experiences and research, but ultimately very little monetary cost could be attributed to it.

Now, here’s what the article is doing;

• It’s giving you an indication of what I know
• It’s showing you how I talk and probably a little bit about how I think
• It’s giving you some potentially helpful advice and ideas , for free
• There’s a good chance that if you’re suitably impressed by this article, you’ll come back to the site

What’s happening is the very beginnings of a relationship between you and I, and we’ve never met. There will be those among you who willjust read and go, and never think twice about me again, but I do that with some other stuff. Ultimately if the content is good enough people will return. And when those people need a web designer, they might be a little more inclined to call me. Or tell others about me.

And here’s the thing – the same thing is happening with every single person who reads this. My site may not have an audience of thousands, but I’ve still managed to make a connection with a bucnh of people I never met personally, and I only had to write this article once.

The same principles apply when meeting people personally too. People almost always have questions of some kind about websites ad computers when they find out what I can do, and I do my best to answer them. This helps a lot. I tend to link people to resources or articles (mine and others), and sometimes I do the odd bit of work for free – maybe an avatar or lightening a photo. Advice is always a good one, just be careful you don’t give it all away for free. It could be as simple as some encouragement regarding their work, sharing a recipe or a resource.

So how can this work for you?

Start by thinking about your site or business, and then think about your target markets. What can you give them that will make them happy, get them to try out your product or service, or simply put your brand to the forefront of their minds?

Say you’re a comic artist. Perhaps you can put up a tutorial showing how to draw basic characters. They’ll remember where they learned. I still link people to the drawing tutorials I learnt from (www.polykarbon.com, www.howtodrawmanga.com) some 1en years ago.

If you’re a book store, perhaps you could have a free reading session for kids once a week. Or have a “best books for age groups” newsletter.

If you’re a golf coach  you could offer cheap or free trial classes and free information about golf.

If you’re a saddlery (like Horsewyse) you could have tutorials for different horsey things.

If you’re a performing group you could have free videos.

The list goes on. And the internet means that it’s easier to give with less cost.

Have fun ^_^

Tags: better marketing, Business, business ideas, business tips, free samples, generosity, improve marketing, loss leaders, Marketing, marketing ideas, marketing tips, online marketing, socialnetworking tips, web marketing tips, webmarketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 1:52 am and is filed under Advice, Business, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.