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5 ways you can market your business using freebies

With increased competition, it’s harder than ever before to market your business, so you need to use every option at your disposal to drive qualified traffic to your site. A tried-and-true tactic has been to give away freebies to engage potential customers and build a relationship that will result in a sale.

Whether it’s a free download, sample, or gift with purchase, freebies offer a great way to enhance your marketing strategy, attract the attention of new customers, and generate qualified leads.

So how can your online business leverage freebie marketing? Let’s take a look at five ways you can make huge gains for your brand.

Earn your audience’s trust with tools that are genuinely helpful

As a small business owner, you know that credibility is the key to conversions. To make more sales, you need to earn the trust of people who visit your site. You can do this by lending a helping hand at no cost to them.

Free tools aimed at your target audience are ideal for building brand credibility and capturing the attention of promising potential customers. So, it’s vital to offer a valuable tool that gives visitors a taste of what your company does and entices them to make a purchase.

To identify what kind of tool would be most beneficial to your customers, ask yourself what pain points your target audience experiences. You can also think about your company’s value and develop a tool that highlights your services’ unique benefits.

For inspiration, let’s take a look at some companies that offer some great free tools to their customers.

Helix Hearing Care, a hearing aid provider, offers its customers a free hearing screening test right on their website. This tool acts as a pre-screening resource customers can use to see if they have hearing loss. Not only is this helpful, but this free tool will attract new customers who are concerned about their hearing, sending more qualified traffic to the business’s website.

You can implement the same tactic into your marketing strategy by identifying what problem your customers are trying to solve, and then providing a quick and easy free tool to help them find a solution.

On the other hand, at Loganix, we offer services for other marketing agencies, and we know that many marketers frequently need to find the Domain Authority of different sites. This is why we have built a free Domain Authority checker tool to drive more qualified traffic to our site. This means we can help our target audience find the information they need while also starting a conversation about how we can help them with other marketing tasks.

When you develop a free tool for your website visitors, think about how it can benefit your business and users. Design a resource that is beneficial to both parties to build a relationship with potential customers as they use your tools.

Allow customers to get a taste of your services for free

If your company offers a service, you might be hesitant to offer free trials or consultations to get potential customers to sign up with you. However, offering a free sample of what your company has to offer will allow them to get a taste of the value your brand offers without requiring any financial commitment.

When offering a free trial, decide whether or not you’ll ask customers to enter their credit card information. This can be a make-or-break moment for many visitors and, if you want to grab the right people and build a strong relationship with them, it could be worth allowing them access to your trial without handing over their payment details. This way, you can avoid the wrong people accidentally being charged at the end of the trial, and will only turn the people who are the best fit into fully-fledged customers.

Take a look at this example from Engine Templates. They offer free but limited access to their Joomla templates, allowing visitors to download and test them before subscribing. Customers even have the option to stick with the free template with a few caveats: their watermark remains on the page, and features are limited. This allows customers to see the value in their easy-to-use templates while helping spread brand awareness for the company.

You can use the same strategy in your marketing efforts by offering free trials, consultations, and other services to help customers feel comfortable with beginning the process to work with your brand.

Attract the right traffic with resources that address customer pain points

A great way to create freebies that drive more qualified traffic to your site is to help your audience. So, try to identify and address real pain points that frequently occur among your ideal audience, because this will allow you to reach your conversion goals quickly and efficiently.

To create the best resources to address your customers’ needs, you’ll first need to identify their pain points. Here are some ways you can figure out what issues you should aim to solve:

Conduct social listening to see what customers are talking about on social media.
Send out online surveys to ask your users directly.
Ask your customer service team about what complaints they hear the most.
Collect information via live chat or customer emails.

Once you know the most common pain points for your customers, design resources that will relieve some of the pressure the issue is causing. Let’s look at a company that does a great job of this as inspiration.

Here’s a great example from the online accounting company FreshBooks. They offer free invoice templates that website visitors can use in a variety of industries. Since invoicing is a common pain point, especially for startups and small businesses, these handy templates offer a solution for customers looking to establish or refine their invoicing practices.

FreshBooks does a great job with building free resources that potential customers can download and use in their own business. These resources help familiarize potential customers with the brand and can help customers overcome doubts about the value that FreshBooks can bring to their business.

You can use the same strategy on your website by building freebies that address customer pain points. Before long, you’ll see a rise in sales as customers see that your brand understands their needs.

Use them to encourage people to join your mailing list

Freebies can also make great lead magnets that you can give prospective customers in exchange for their contact details. This will then allow you to stay in touch through your email marketing campaign, which will increase the chances of people buying from you down the road.

This is a win-win for everyone because visitors get a free download that will genuinely help them out, while you get more contacts for your mailing list.

Let’s look at a company that does a great job of incentivizing potential customers to exchange their contact information for access to their free resource library.

Take a look at this example from The Budget Mom, an online budgeting education website. It offers an expansive assortment of freebies to teach its users about budgeting their income. To access these free resources, users must enter their name and email address to unlock the exclusive password.

Email marketing is a powerful tool because it provides you with direct access to your audience. Plus, many customers will keep the same email address for several years, so you will have a good place to reach them with important messages and promotions.

Use freebies to incentivize repeat purchases

You may think of freebies as a way to attract new customers, but they can also help you retain your existing customer base. So, think about how you could leverage free products, services, or resources to keep your customers coming back time and time again.

Customer loyalty is essential because it’s much cheaper to retain a client than secure a new one. To give you some inspiration, let’s look at a company that does a great job of offering freebies to their existing customers to build a loyal customer base.

Here is an example from the cosmetic retailer Sephora. Their Beauty Insider program is a multi-tiered loyalty program that gives different freebies depending on your membership level, which coincides with how much the buyer spends with Sephora. The more customers buy, the quicker they rise through the program’s ranks, which is a great way to encourage continued engagement with customers even after they make a purchase on the site.

You can apply the same tactic to your marketing strategy by thinking about what is essential to your existing customers. It could be access to exclusive content, free items, or opportunities only given to your most loyal buyers. Whichever route you go down, remember that rewarding loyal customers is the best way to keep them coming back for more.

Summary

No matter your industry, any business can leverage freebies to its advantage. This marketing technique gives the best of both worlds for all involved: your customers get something useful for free, and your business gains credibility and exposure, opening the door for more conversions.

Looking for more interesting articles? Check out the blog at Engine Templates for more ways to grow and enhance your online business.