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Giving some services for free guarantees leads and satisfies customers, or at least that was my thought a while ago. Now, I’m not sure if giving out some things for free is the key to win reputation and clients. Revenues are not really beneficial when this “giving out for free” takes place, so I’d like to know how to decide if giving out for free or not and when it’s the right time to do it. |
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The best thing to give away is something that satisfies a small need of a customer while not fully satisfying them, and that builds loyalty, all while costing little (so as to be sustainable). A good example is the free bread in restaurants before your food. This costs very little and causes the customer to feel more full by the end of the meal. It builds loyalty because the customer feels they got xx% more food than they really got, creating the illusion of value. On a web application a good example of something free is a basic account with limited capability. This gives the customer something more tangible to come back to, while giving them time to add personal information in. This gets them pot-committed by taking up their time as well as giving you their email so that you can remind them from time to time to upgrade their account. All that, and it only costs you a few rows in a database. |
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Well, customers value freebies but up to a certain point, ‘because they know it’s not something completely reliable, and if it is, it’s not how they feel about it. I guess before deciding if giving up a “trial” of your service/product, you gotta check on your budget. I mean, giving out that for free has to be a profitable move on the long run, so you need to check it first. |
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Offering something "Free" is good when done as a value add to a current customer. When you have someone doing business with you that sees value in what you do, giving them something for free is a good investment when done properly. To offer services or proucts for free is very dangerous becuase it means that you are making it all about the price of the product and not about how good what you have is. So you can actually end of lessing the value of what you offer. Remember that cheap things are never good and good things are never cheap. If you do decide to do something FREE to attract new customers, make it a "trial" basis to get people to look your way. If you simply just give things away, people will always be there just to take it and give nothing in return. |
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The word "FREE" attracts costumers. But I wouldn't give it all for free. It really depends in the type of business you are running. As Maggie says, giving out for free has to be profitable. |
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This site/service is for free. What do you think about the quality and contributors? I am also debating over similar issue. I'm between 'reasonable and free'. |
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