When people hear freebie marketing, they think office consumables: branded pens or sticky notes are indeed everywhere, so much so that you sometimes wonder why anyone bothers buying stationery anymore. With so much of the stuff being handed out everywhere, making your brand noticed is hardly worth the challenge, not to mention the expense... Or is it?
Is there a sense in giving out stuff when the trend is to cut on expenses, not spend more? Well, actually, yes. Because everyone, consumer included, is trying to cut on costs, free stuff has never been more popular. In fact, now is the perfect time to use freebies marketing in order to build brand awareness and create a relationship with customers.
Used in a promotional campaign, freebies will achieve several objectives at once:
- Build immediate brand connection with new customers;
- Lead to sustainable loyalty if maintained intelligently;
- Alongside a simple social media button, they are the perfect incentive for existing customers to endorse your service or product and promote your business.
You think: “I don't have a lot to spend on giveaways and the promise of another pen is not going to create word-of-mouth.” Another pen, no. In fact, for a free offer to be effective, it has to hold value in the eyes of the customer (unlike, say, a key ring with your logo on it). Yet an incentive does not have to be big (or expensive) to have a powerful marketing effect.
Freebies are not necessarily products: complimentary after-sales services, small gift vouchers or reductions can have a great influence on loyalty. Open the offer to anyone by making it a birthday offer (since everyone likes a present on their birthday, no matter how small) or at Christmas and you already have the potential for customer-led endorsement.
Before you order thousands of little branded gadgets, you have to ask yourself what you're trying to achieve: Stay top-of-mind with existing customers? Make an impression on the general public with your new brand? Target a particular type of people? In any case, always pick something that people will value, keep and use. Even better if you can amuse them or surprise them enough that they will show it to friends. Preferably choose something that speaks of you and what you do.
Here are a few examples:
- A financial adviser gives away little LED torches (they come in the shape of a credit card nowadays, and not a lot thicker): “Lighting your way to wealth” could be the subscript.
- Locksmiths give away a small lock-picking set: “We're always only a few minutes away but just in case”
- For any retailer, shopping bags are a fantastic asset. Now that supermarkets charge for bad plastic bags, make your free bag reusable and you can be guaranteed that customers will be doing your advertisement for you. Have them done in a stylish way, an unusual shape or with a striking picture and you'll be attracting attention of other people.
As far as freebies are concerned, you need to choose between quality or quantity. There's no right answer to this: it all depends on what you want to achieve: mass advertisement or image building? Sometimes just a few well-chosen items will have the same, if not better impact than thousands of low-cost disposables.
So the question is not whether to give away free stuff but what to give and how to get it to your customers or potential customers.
Given that you have found the perfect freebie, now you need to ask yourself how to get it to your target. Mailing it to existing customers may be a good idea but only if you are looking to work on the quality of your relationship with those. It can be rather pricy though, so make sure that you are doing something absolutely necessary. A better solution would be to send your existing customers an offer for free stuff using your mail database (which is surely something you now have). They can come and pick it up, giving you the opportunity for turning a face-to-face into a sale!
Trying to reach potential customers? Well, there are lots of ways you can do that. Depending on the nature of your freebie, you could just have a couple of students handing them out to the public. Japanese firms have been using packs of pocket tissues for that. People love them and, unlike a flyer, they do keep them and will end up looking at them over and over again.
Unless you are going to do it yourself, handing-out can be costly in the long run and there is no guarantee that you will reach the people who are actually interested in your product or service. Using a social media advertising campaign (like Facebook, Linkedin etc.) to put your freebie out there allows you to target your potential customers quite efficiently. As an added bonus, with the pay per click system it will only cost you when people are interested in the offer.
Last but not least, it's easy (and most of the time free) to take advantage of the few New Zealand website that list freebies. Here is a review of the ones we could find:
http://www.freebies.co.nz/
A simple site powered by Blogger, not very popular (just over 100,000 views since May 2010) but free to use (just send a description and link to your freebie offer).
http://www.contest.co.nz/freebies-giveaways/
Another very simple freebies listing site in the form of a forum, with lots of followers. People post links to freebies they have come across – so you can do the same with your own freebie.
http://bargainer.co.nz/
A beautifully presented website where it is free to post bargains and freebies. They will be published and stay there as long as they are genuine free or bargain offers. Send in a picture, description and link to your offer.
http://www.freestuffheadquarters.com/
Another beautifully presented site, with freebies and bargains for both Australia and New Zealand. They limit their listings to what is actually completely free (not reduced) but will list any of those at no charge.
http://itry.co.nz/
The paying version of bargainer.co.nz and freestuffheadquarters.com. Itry will charge you to advertise your freebie/sample offer. They argue that they are more popular than other sites and advertise themselves – although I must say I only found them by browsing the free listings on contest.co.nz – not when I looked for New Zealand freebies sites on Google.
http://nz.wowfreebies.com/
Owned by European WowMedia, this site lists freebies for New Zealand (they have different sites for other countries). With over 1500 people following their posts on Facebook, you could say they are popular enough to use. You'll only have to pay to list a freebie if you own the website on which it's listed. Otherwise they will list freebies at no charge when sent by people who have stumbled upon them on the web.
As a last word, we need to mention the golden rule of freebie marketing:
Linkability. Any amount of free stuff, even good quality stuff is never to do your business any good if people can't see or are ever able to forget where it came from! Have your name, logo and website details clearly visible.
Time to get giving!
