Archives: Marketing

How Much to Budget for Your “Free” Giveaway

Everyone loves free, except for the people who must pay for it. That is the unwritten truth that exists behind any “free” marketing method or campaign. There is typically, though not always, a real cost in terms of time and expense.

So when you find yourself tempted to offer something for free, be sure to count the cost in each and every way you need to, in order to make sure your free content, bonus gift or other promotional product you chose to give is affordable. It’s time to take a hard look at the costs you’ll bear on the road to a freebie.

What types of “free” are we talking about here?

The most obvious places we see free work its way into our businesses is in the act of gathering email addresses. Offering a freebie is standard operating procedure, and will not be changing anytime soon. More often than not we are offered a free ebook, report, video series, e-course, webinar or email series in exchange for our email address and other contact information.

What you need to understand is that there are costs associated with the creation of these freebies. Let’s look at several of the actual hard costs you’ll have to deal with in the creation of your freebies.

• Actually writing or otherwise creating the content – There is someone who is responsible for getting this done, and you’ll very likely need to pay them. There could also be ancillary costs that go along with this, like software or hardware to help produce your content.
• Designing the marketing funnel pages – You can do this with software programs, but somebody has to understand how to do it, and that will take time, money and talent. Then there are web designers, and that can cost a bundle.
• Marketing hard costs – You’ll need an email autoresponder company, webinar charges, and a way to deliver your freebie, whether it’s downloaded from your site or hosted elsewhere. Someone will need to set that up. Shipping and hard costs for physical products have to be considered too.
• Advertising – You may want to advertise to get the best response possible, and definitely this costs time and money.

Using a freebie, or freemium content as people are referring to them these days, continues to be a great way to build a list or audience for your products and services. We just thought you should know you’ll need to count the cost of “free” when producing your freebie.

get in touch with the Marketing Gurus from Redback Web Solutions when you need to create your next Freebie. Ph: 1300 768 100