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The value of adding free resources to your marketing

June 3, 2011 By Sherryn McBride 1 Comment

Have you thought about value adding free resources to your product offerings?  Everyone benefits from knowledge and the goodwill it generates is excellent branding for your business.

Often called white papers, e-books, free resources or information products, every business can create an educational offering to position themselves as an expert in their field.

Write them in the form of information sheets, helpful tips, how to articles, care of your product, pitfalls, dos and don’ts, checklists, FAQ’s etc.  They should be topics or discussion points closely related to your business or very relevant your target market.

Using a free report with interesting and valuable tips and hints for your customer is an ideal lead generator if you have a good software program to track and measure results.   This creates ‘warm’ leads to market to – with the future opportunity to turn a prospect into a customer.

Numbers are always popular, and here are some sentence starter ideas for you.

- 8 things to be aware of…
- 7 ways to…
- 6 reasons why…
- 5 secrets to better…
- 4 steps to the perfect…
- questions to ask yourself before you choose…
- 2 topics to discuss at your next…
- 1 lesson to learn if you really want to…

It must be reliable information, related to your target market, and remember to apply the rules of “WIIFM” (what’s in it for me) so think in terms of the wants, needs, desires, solutions and pain points for your target market.

Create the free resources yourself then add an “author resource box” to promote yourself and your business. This is a great way to build your profile and position yourself as an expert in your field.  Finish with your business name and contact details.

Author Bio: Sherryn McBride is a freelance marketing consultant and her knowledge is drawn from 25 years managing state branches for national/multinational corporations and consultancies. To learn more about Sherryn and to read more of her articles view her profile.

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Filed Under: Marketing
  • http://www.exceptionalsales.com.au Greg Ferrett

    Hi Sherryn,

    While I agree in principle (I do offer free stuff), I have seen this go horribly wrong. Sometimes people (especially individuals) see ‘free’ as a way of getting inexpensive marketing. Without care this can be a real challenge and devalue your brand.

    The challenge – providing ‘free’ material of enough value and credibility people will continue to see you as an expert. There are over 1 billion free ebooks in circulation today and I suspect very few of them carry anything of significant value. Many authors see ebooks and other free gifts as easy gimmicks to produce. If you do decide to give things away ‘free’ it needs to be something the customer sees as being of value, not just the author. If the customer does not see the value they will just ignore you in the future.

    Devalue the brand
    I recently started a podcast and in my research I evaluated dozens of other podcasts. I saw promises of weekly / daily quality material. One weekly podcast, offered for ‘free’ had no episodes for over three years – yet it was still advertising and promising new material weekly. If you do not deliver on your promise, no matter how much or little you charge your brand is devalued. Better to charge a small amount, even a few dollars, to keep the funds rolling in to pay for the regular broadcasts.

    My alternative to ‘free’ is to always place a value on things and then trade the ‘free’ stuff for something of value. For example, ‘Normally $29.95, but for my subscribers this month there will be no charge’ and put an end date / time on the offer. You give away value ($29.95) to receive value (their contact details and permission to email them) – your first sale with this client. Once the time has expired put a new offer in place and include the old material in a subscription service or available for the original price.

    This model works exceptionally well for groups like MarketingPROF,Wesley Hill and other well regarded marketing companies. In addition it provides funds for ongoing development, and still offers you a way of offering material for ‘free’