Why every business should give things away for free!

Imagine if you were about to launch a new product and all you had to do was send an email out with a link, and people start buying?

Wouldn’t that be awesome?

This is why businesses collect email addresses. 

They have a list of potential customers, ready and waiting. They simply send out an email to their list to sell the products.

So how can you start to implement this into your business?

By offering something irresistible, for free.

In truth, it isn’t entirely free. The audience pays for the item with their email address information. 

If you are watching a You Tube video, and the host says the link to download my free blah blah is in the description box below. If you want the free download, you click the link, add in your email address, and then you receive the free thing. 

Then, that host has your email address, and now they can offer you more things, whether they are free or paid for. 

You can, of course, opt-out straight away if you want to, but what if the next offer is even more irresistible than the first?

And so you might ‘buy’ the following offer.

Before you know it, you are on the list and receiving marketing regularly. And that is fine because you like this person, and what they talk about. 

But what if that person decides to sell some merch? A coffee cup with a funny quote on it, maybe. And you really want that cup for your office. 

All they have to do to sell that cup is send you an email. And you will buy it. 

And they probably have thousands of people on their database, and perhaps they all buy the cup. 

That cup has likely made them thousands of pounds in sales by sending one email!

The power of building a list in business is enormous.

Offer valuable, helpful information, or be entertaining. Once you have gathered the email address, you will keep the customer because it is advantageous to hear from you regularly. 

There is, of course, a fine line - bombard them, and they will leave. 

Bore them, and they will leave. 

But, if you give value, they will stay. 

And then you have a database of engaged, warmed up customers ready to buy from you when the time comes to sell them something. 

Gary Vee (if you don’t know him, look him up - awesome marketing guy on YouTube, but also has written some fantastic books) wrote a book called ‘Jab, jab jab, right hook’. The summary of which is, you can’t be all sales all the time. The book can be bought here.

You have to earn the right to sell to your audience. 

Give them valuable information 80% of the time, with NO SALES PITCH. 

People know if they are being sold to, and it is an instant turn off. It is a sure-fire way of losing subscribers!

But, if you give value, regularly and consistently, the one time a year that you try to sell to them, they will receive it well and will probably buy.

This is the right hook!

You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, would you? You have to put the work in, romance them a little, get to know them! The same applies to your customers.

By having a list of people that happily receive free content from you each month, you have a list of buyers when the time comes for you to sell to them. 

It is hard to start a business from scratch. If you don’t have any way of collecting email addresses or gathering contact information, you effectively start from scratch each time you try to sell a new product.

What if Facebook closed down tomorrow? 

Would you have any idea who had followed your page? 

Many businesses see Facebook as their marketing platform - but you don’t own it, and you are at the mercy of the platform and their algorithm.

If they switched Facebook off tomorrow, would you have to start again at the beginning on a different platform? 

If you had a list of your customers, you could let them turn Facebook off and move on to the next platform without any worries.

Take back the control of your business.

Create something irresistible that your perfect customer would LOVE to have.

Make sure that you follow all of the GDPR guidance about keeping data.

And then create something awesome to send them each month.

This could be a newsletter, a blog article, a checklist, a behind the scenes video of you making your product—anything to stay in touch with them and give them valuable, helpful or entertaining content. 

Keep this up, and you will very quickly have a list of your own - then watch your sales SOAR!

If you would like any help creating your irresistible freebie so that you can get started building your list, get in touch!