The best way to make money online is to give away your very best work. Every fiber of the business person's being will fight it. But in order to have great success, you need to change your mindset and embrace this.
Your goal as an e-Marketer is to make money,
right? How is giving stuff away going to make you money?
Some of life's most important truths are counter-intuitive, as is the case with this essential marketing technique.
Don't break the bank
Information is a great tool you can use as a giveaway, even if you are not normally in an information-based business. Giving people advise in an area you where are expert doesn't have to cost a dime! You can write a report or eBook, or record an audio or video. Creating products like these is very inexpensive, and helps the people you give them to value your opinion and expertise. There may be other things you can think to give away, but information will usually come at the lowest cost.
Reciprocity
At its most basic level, giving your prospect something for free creates a sense in the recipient to want to reciprocate. For most people, this response happens is us automatically. If you do something nice for me, I am going to feel an urge to do something nice for you in return. You may be thinking that using this as a marketing technique is somewhat manipulative, but it is not. You do nice things in your daily life because it is the right thing to do, not because expect something from others. The same can be true in e-Marketing.
Become a liked and trusted source
Your prospect may go from not knowing you at all to suddenly valuing you and your opinion.
Do you know that feeling you get when you are in a store “just looking” and a salesperson comes over to ask whether you want any help? If you are anything like me, most of the time, you recoil and try to get the salesperson away from you.
Now think about when you need to buy something and ask a friend for advice or a recommendation. You’ll usually take your friend’s recommendation, even if they aren’t an expert in the field. You can see how differently we react when sales advice come from a trusted source instead of a stranger.
Through your giveaway, your prospect's opinion of you can move from being the unknown salesperson to the trusted advisor.
Build a marketing list
Although you are giving something away, you are hoping to get something of value in return. Most often, that is a name and e-mail address. This information will be collected on a list so you can market offers to your prospects later. Use an email list management system or autoresponder to manage the process of collecting this information and doing it with the prospects' permission.
Relevancy
A list will only work for you if you have offers to promote to it which are relevant to them. To make sure you are attracting the right people to your list, make sure your giveaways are in line with the products or services you intend to offer.
A good example of how not to use your list is this... Do not send offers to your list which are not consistent with your business. If you are in dog training, you will not make many sales of weight loss products to them. This is a waste of time. Chances are your authority with your prospects will fall too. You will almost certainly also start driving people to unsubscribe from your list.
Don't lose your hard-earned prospects by pitching them stuff they don't want. This relevancy starts with your giveaway. Keep all of this aligned from the start.
Provide value
Don't underestimate the importance of the value of your giveaway. If your giveaway is not valuable to the prospect, all the benefits described above will not come to you.
You are going to be very tempted to hold onto your “good stuff” until you can get paid for it. But your giveaway is your first impression. If it is weak, the prospect will not be impressed by you. They will not stick around to find out about your good material if they are unimpressed with your giveaway.
Make your giveaway great!
This is where is all comes together, and even if you‘ve been on board with everything up to this point, you may still need to make a major mindset shift in order to make the really big money.
You should give away your best work!
You don't need to give away everything. But you should think about what the most valuable piece of information or advice you have is and give that away. Probably the best thing you can do is tell your prospect exactly what they need to know to get one step closer to their goal.
What will your prospects think of you when you‘ve given them something as incredibly valuable as that? Do you think they will want to thank you for it? Will they see you as a likable and trusted source of information? Will they be impressed by the fact that you helped them solve a particular problem without asking for anything in return?
Are you starting to see the value in giveaways, especially when they are done correctly? How likely would you be to buy from someone who has done that much for you for free? Chances are you would be willing to buy from them, and you would probably do it more than once.
Make your giveaways great, and give tremendous value. Win over your prospects. Then you will have built up a great amount of respect and goodwill, and will be able to sell things to them.
