How Free Giveaways Can Help You Get You All the Clients You Want

by David Frey

Offering free giveaways to prospects and clients is a powerful business building strategy that can result in a flood of new and repeat coaching and consulting customers.

It may seem counterintuitive to give away your services to build your business; however, people can’t resist the lure of receiving something for free. The word free, as worn out as it may seem, is still the most powerful word in marketing and has a hypnotic effect on people.

Why Free Giveaways Work
The reason free giveaways work so well is two-fold. First, prospects that test your service risk-free will hopefully recognize its value and want more of what you have to offer. Or even better, your prospect will get “hooked” on your service and won’t be able to live without it.

Second, the fact that your coaching or consulting service was given to your prospects as a free gift will compel them to return the favor by continuing the relationship with you. This principle is called the “Law of Reciprocity,” which simply states that people naturally feel an obligation to return favors as a way of expressing their thanks.

The Law of Reciprocity works! For example, the Disabled American Veterans organization reports that its simple direct mail request for donations produced a response rate of 18%. But after they started giving away personalized mailing labels to potential donors their success rate nearly doubled to 35 percent. It worked like a charm.

Information – The Ultimate Free Giveaway
Ideally, it’s best to offer free giveaways that are low cost but have a high perceived value to the person you are giving it to. Information is a great example of a free giveaway that has a low product cost and a high perceived value. This is why it’s smart for small business coaching and consulting businesses to use special reports containing “insider” information as a free giveaway for new customer lead generation.

Your special report could be a written document, an audiocassette, or a video containing subject material that your target market would be interested in. Videos especially have a high perceived value.

Free Giveaway Case Studies
There are a myriad of ways to offer a free giveaway and many effective types of giveaways (other than information) that your  business can use to attract new and inactive customers. The following are a few ideas on how to give away products or services to build your business:

Idea # 1 – Free Audio CD
Offer a free audio CD to your prospects and newsletter subscribers. Audio CD's are simple to product (I take you step-by-step through the process of creating your own audio CD on the "First 20 Clients Audio Program") and very inexpensive.

Idea # 2 – Free Coaching Session
Most people don't even know what coaching is. Why not set a goal to give one free coaching session a day via telephone or in-person to let your prospect experience the power of coaching.

Idea # 3 – Free Business Audit
Build value by giving away free business audit. Business owners would love to know how they're doing from an objective person. They would also enjoy receiving suggestions for improvement. The beauty of a free business audit is that you build your case for a consulting project, while you're building goodwill.

To attract new clients you should offer your free giveaways to prospects that haven’t yet done business with you. You might even partner with a non-competing, but complimentary business and do a joint free offer to each other's customer base.

Justify Any Deal That’s “Too Good To Be True”
If your offer that includes free giveaways appears “too good to be true” to your prospect, it could decrease it’s believability and your credibility. To avoid this you should always give the reason why you can offer such a great deal.

Remember, your prospect is very skeptical and has good reason to be. We’ve all been duped at one point in time by a “too good to be true” scam. Furnishing your prospects with the reason why you can offer them such a good deal helps them to logically reconcile your offer in their minds. In turn, this will give your prospect the comfort level needed to act on your offer.

Conclusion
Using free giveaways is an effective coaching and consulting marketing strategy if used correctly. Think about what you can offer free-of-charge that your prospects would consider valuable and that you can give at a low cost to you.

© Copyright 2003 David Frey, Marketing Best Practices Inc.

David Frey is President of Marketing Best Practices Inc., a small business marketing consulting firm and the editor of the Marketing Best Practices Newsletter. His products include The Small Business Marketing Bible, Instant Referral Systems, and Coaches and Consultants Marketing Bootcamp.

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