If you’re looking to boost sales of your digital products, freebies can often work wonders. Acting as an incentive to buyers, they have the potential to really drive your sales.
However, freebies aren’t always the best option. Like every type of pricing strategy, there are pros and cons of offering them. Read on to discover how to determine when to offer freebies to your customers and when to avoid it.
When to Offer Freebies
There are a number of instances where freebies can prove beneficial to your business. These include when:
- You’re trying to build up traffic
- You want to increase brand trust
- You want to boost sales
Freebies tend to generate a lot more traffic to your website. If you advertise them on your social media and blog channels, you’ll see a significant increase in traffic to your website. Of course, this doesn’t mean these visitors will buy from you, but it does increase the chances of making more conversions.
Offering freebies can also build up trust in your brand. This is especially true if the freebie you are offering provides useful information. If you offer a free trial or snippet of your product, it also gives customers an opportunity to test out the product before they buy. This provides a level of transparency which is extremely important in today’s businesses. Customers want to buy from companies they can trust.
You can also offer freebies to boost sales. Say you run a website design business. By offering a free template, it shows customers what you are capable of. When the time comes for them to redesign their website, they’ll remember the quality of your free sample and be much more likely to hire you to work on their website.
When Shouldn’t You Offer Them?
So, we’ve looked at the potential benefits freebies can provide. However, it’s also important to know when not to offer free products.
The thing to remember is that freebies are designed to enhance sales. They should be used as a marketing tactic. This means not giving your entire product away for free. After all, why would someone buy your product if they’ve received it at zero cost? So, if you’re selling an eBook for example, rather than giving away the entire thing, provide free snippets. Or, offer a free worksheet your customers will receive when they buy the eBook.
You’ll also want to limit the number of freebies you provide. If you continuously offer freebies, your customers will come to expect them. So, when you do offer them, make sure you do so for limited time periods and don’t offer too many in a short space of time.
Freebies do have the potential to deliver a lot of great benefits to businesses. However, they can also be potentially damaging if you don’t plan them strategically. You need to make sure they’re providing value, but that they don’t give too much away. Take the time to research the different types of freebies you can create and decide which work better for your business.
