FREE. No Cost. Complimentary. No charge.
Have you noticed? We have gotten so used to getting things for free that it’s nearly impossible to find any product, service, experience, or program that doesn’t include something given away for nothing at some point in the selling cycle.
The trend to free is certainly not new. I remember “free” sticking it’s claws into my business back 15 years ago when I was in the women’s underwear business.
Originally, we offered a twice yearly sale at 20% off. Then people got numb to that so to maintain our numbers, we went to 25% off twice a year.
Then customers had to be enticed with Buy 2 Get 1 Free (or 33 1/3%) off. Now it’s Buy 2 Get 2 Free.
Without FREE, women stopped buying. This trend to FREE killed the department store business and forced manufacturing offshore.
Now let’s take a look at what’s happening in the service and information sectors of business….
Why Free Stuff For Business Has Taken Over
Information may mean power, but we sure don’t want to pay for that power.
One massively successful marketer wrote his book, and sold it on Amazon FOR FREE for an entire week. Why? To get it on the Amazon best “seller” list of course. Amazon counted free downloads as sales!
More and more you find books and e-books, audio courses, video courses, entire modules of programs, free sessions, free masterminds, free blogging services, free free free everything. I’ve seen courses and programs overblown with bonuses and freebies to entice the sale. They are so overblown with bonuses the customer has forgotten what the main value proposition is.
So who’s buying anything with real money?
Great question.
It is taking more and more for people to part with their money for even high-value content and services.
Why?
Because we have trained them to expect almost everything for nothing. We who use FREE are responsible for this dysfunctional mindset.
I recently saw something that just about blew my mind:
I was reading a question in a very popular marketing forum.
One business owner posted the question: “Is clothing deductible on my taxes?”
Seriously?
Asking marketing entrepreneurs whether they think clothing is a valid tax deduction vs. asking (and paying) your highly qualified CPA for the best answer for you and your taxes?
And the business owners in the forum answered! As if they know or are qualified to know…. they don’t know the question-asker’s business entity or her tax situation.
Free is costing you a fortune.
That’s right, I said it.
- If you are trying to piece information to help you grow your business – with free information
- If you are trying to get legal advice to protect you as you grow your business – with free advice
- If you are trying to use free financial, marketing, business planning, production, web development input
…….your business is pretty likely going nowhere fast.
I can give you example after example of people who got free websites from “friends” that took ages to finish and are still not properly designed and developed.
I can give you case after case of people who bartered for business plans. Guess what? Those business plan writers suddenly vanished in the middle of the project leaving these folks high and dry.
Like you, I love getting free info, reports, books, but understand this:
There is a really high price for not paying for quality, service, or information. It’s going to cost you much more in the long run in time, mistakes, and effectiveness.
I see this FREE mentality as an addiction; a disease that is killing off robust, healthy, responsible enterprise.
Expecting a lot for nothing. As a business owner and professional: do you see anything wrong with that equation?
One of my favorite business gurus, Michael Hyatt recently wrote a great blog post on How To Use Free To Drive Your Marketing Strategy. In his post, he also shares his concern about free as a business strategy, but distinguishes using free as a marketing strategy.
I can sort of get behind this. Sort of…..
Why? Because where do we draw the line?
We train our prospects and clients how to treat us. Free is a very dangerous and powerful tool.
Use it right, and it can open lots of doors. Overuse it and it’s like going on a drinking binge and waking up after a blackout. You don’t know where you’re going or where you’ve been.
In Chris Anderson’s book FREE: The Future of A Radical Price (Hyperion 2009) he says:
“Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it is.”
FREE becomes an unhealthy drug , because we don’t have to take any risks. And as humans, we are afraid of loss much more than we are drawn to gain.
So where does that leave you as a service business owner?
Am I recommending No More Free across the board?
Am I being a hypocrite because I still offer some items for FREE on my website and my blog?
Not really.
Here’s why:
The Solution To Tire-Kicking Free-Stuff Seekers
I recommend FREE in selective, well-controlled doses.
I recommend establishing very clear guidelines in your own mind about where FREE ends and FOR FEE begins.
Here are my recommendations for you to get off FREE and build respectable FEES so your business can thrive.
1. Train prospects and clients that your knowledge, expertise, information, and tools comes with an corresponding appropriate price.
2. Selectively offer appetizer-sized bits of information and tips to prospects giving them a fair, reasonable taste of what you can do to help them be successful and accomplish their objectives.
3. Stop giving FREE sessions. That’s right. I said it.
By offering a for-fee introductory session ( I have no problem offering this initial session at an “appetizer rate”) you will quickly learn who is willing to have skin in the game and who is just kicking tires, who just wants something for nothing. If you are the only one with skin in the game, your prospect has zero accountability and values you and your expertise less.
As Michael Hyatt indicates, using FREE as a marketing lever to build your subscribers is a viable strategy. The key is to not overdo it and begin to train your readers and followers that they can get lots and lots of FREE from you and hold off on hiring you.
FREE should be the appetizer, not the meal.
What’s your feeling about FREE?
Nancy–I think there is a difference between free and something having value. I don’t think people respect free. I know I had offered free coaching calls at one point but the people who used them did not respect me or my time. It was almost as if they were doing me a favor. They did not understand they were not people I would have even accepted as a coach because they did not qualify and were not willing.
I know the people I do choose to work with is not because they offer me something for free, it’s because when I do buy from them they have great content and access. There are times I may not have the money and so have to pass on a class but the people I follow give great value. Frankly, I get turned off by “free” AFTER I’ve bought a product or a program…especially if they talk about free bonuses. How can it be free? I just paid for it, lol.
I guess that it has turned in to it being a hook and the consumer knowing it’s a hook and being caught by it anyway. We are like addicts and can’t stop ourselves.
I’ll be thinking about this one for quite awhile! Thanks for being so thought provoking, Nancy.
Wendy, exactly what I was hoping for – to have people THINK about the cost of FREE before
they just simply follow the well-beaten path.
Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts about this!
Nancy, Thank you for the thought provoking article!
I have wrestled with the free offers, free strategy sessions, etc. in my business, particularly on the coaching side. When I started out, I had a free ecourse, which I used to build my list. It was “too good” and didn’t get me clients for book-coaching. Now it is my entry-level product for people who don’t have the budget for my other opportunities.
My first mentor was big on free strategy sessions, but he was enrolling people into high-ticket programs, which I was not. It took me a long time to realize that it was not a good model for me. So I’ve stopped doing free strategy sessions, except on rare occasions. Now I will do a complimentary consultation, which is really more to discover if we are good match to work together and through what avenue.
It has been an evolutionary process as my business grows and I learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Reading articles like yours are very helpful for that process of discovery.
Faye, I’m so glad you brought up what you’ve learned about free sessions from mentors. This is the model most consultants and coaches have been taught. The issue is that not every model fits all businesses – as in your case.
But there are other factors: today, there are more coaches than ever before and the market is flooded in a way that didn’t exist previously. People have a different level of sophistication and access to information so free means something different today than years ago, and to different segments of the population.
I’m glad you figured out Free vs. For Fee. Now the opportunity is all about what is the right fee for which program/product and which customer.
Hi Nancy,
Great article & love your email subject line – very clever 🙂
You are right there is no value in FREE and I agree with Wendy, people don’t value free. They signup for anything free and overload their computers with information they aren’t going to use.
Few year ago I wan in nutrition industry & used to give free samples. It was painful to realize that lots of people come just for the FREE stuff and they didn’t have any intention of continuing with a program. It wasn’t healthy on my bottomline at all.
Anyway coming back to your post, I am in the process of starting my coaching program & appreciate your advise.
“FREE should be the appetizer, not the meal” – love it
Damayanthi
Hi Nancy!
There is a post I’m working on where I initially wanted to create a free PDF of web coding tasks but realized that giving a sample or free taste of that content would be better. Our goal is to not only help others with high quality content, but to make a profit from it and if we continue to give items away we end up losing the drive we had for our business since everyone will demand everything that we produce to be free.
I think we as entrepreneurs have to find a balance of what we would like to give away and what we need to charge. Thanks for providing some insight on this topic.
Denise, you’re right, it’s not an either or thing.
It is in the balance.
My concern is that the pendulum has swung way too far to the FREE side.
Thanks for your input.
Love it, Nancy! This is such a core piece of my Charge What You Deserve work. Folks think they have to give their time for free until they are more established. What they’re doing is establishing that their time has zero value.
I do believe in giving great content for free, but I like to distinguish this as material that can easily be delivered “one to many” such as a PDF report, blog post, tele-seminar, etc.
Thanks for this post…this is SO important and something I need to be reminded of as well 😉 Hope you’re doing well!
Cheers,
Tom
Tom, you are definitely the man when it comes to Charge What You Deserve.
And your recommendations are in keeping with what I meant by “selective FREE” stuff.
Thanks for weighing in here – hope you’re doing well too!
Regarding FREE I think it depends on what the content is and how hard it is for the prospect/client to get their brain around what you are selling. We do marketing based on personality types. It’s a fact. Some personality types take longer to decide to buy. It’s not about FREE. It’s just that way.
A type we call Thinkers is the classic “fence sitter.” They are the last to make up their minds and decide to buy. They say: “I’m thinking about it” and they mean it. Gentle persistence wins with them. And they can become great clients.
The Olympian type steps right up and is the first to buy. It’s like that.
My point is don’t confuse giving things away FREE with your prospect’s point of view and how they decide to buy. Get an understanding of what you might do to win their trust and build a relationship with relevance and give it time. When they are ready to buy if you do it right they will choose to buy from you.
You have to stretch further sometimes.
Jay, interesting perspective. To me I’d like my clients and prospective clients to stretch as much as I do.
The issue with free is it often results in exactly your last point – that we have to stretch sometimes.
Free takes all the need to stretch from the prospect and puts it on the marketer.
Don’t believe that’s a smart business policy.
We are all different, true. Understanding our prospects individual buying needs and patterns is very important, but not
when it messes with our profitability and ability to thrive in businesses.
I’m chuckling at what @Jay said because ONE of his markets has actually been my entire market for too long: I’m a business coach providing ebooks, teleseminars and (no longer) coaching for introverts! After all being one and being successful in sales helping them became a passion. I totally relate to his saying there are different buying styles for different people which requires different approaches. Not one way of selling helps all people buy. Still, based on a recent laser coaching session with quite a high profile coach, I’m giving away WAY too much.
Great article, Nancy, and it dovetails with a comment I made on my own newsletter about starting an online business. While FREE may have been the way to get people into your Internet marketing funnel, more and more the expectation is that people can find the information for free anyway … so why pay for your program upsell? It’s an especially prevalent attitude among cash-strapped entrepreneuers who, understandably, are trying to be as frugal as possible. But when you see major Internet marketers (with HUGE lists) giving away entire DAYS of free streaming video content to bring people into a few thousand dollar program, you have to wonder what kind of success the vast majority of ordinary e-commerce sites can reasonably expect. Here’s a radical thought: how abut giving the FREE as a value-add AFTER someone has made the decision to work with you? It can be a handy way to help cement the good feelings they have about having purchased, by receiving an unexpected gift.
Really interesting idea, Nina. Go for it!
Here’s the real issue I wanted to share with my readers:
You may think you’re getting the real information and guidance for free. But by trying to be frugal and get
free video content and “training” you are not getting the mentoring you need “customized” for you and your business.
People are thinking all that stuff is free, but it’s costing much more in lost time and errors because their implementation is
spotty or faulty.
There really isn’t any free lunch.
But I do like the idea of the “free” added value you suggest after someone makes a purchase or engages you.
What do others think of Nina’s idea?