What Are Your Stories of Giveaways That Yielded Huge Results?
CyHead
Senior Member
- Apr 6, 2009
- 953
- 915
They're called loss leaders in the marketing world, give away a small product of value that drives in business and then sell a lot more.
To do it effectively, you need to have a strategy for what you're going to do to nuture and convert the people who come in from the free giveaway. Problem is that free creates a mentality in people and attracts people who have no intention of spending - especially in the digital world.
In the real world, black Friday is a perfect example of this in action - the job is to get people into retail stores, because once they're inside - they know people will want to buy other things. So they give out "door stopper" or "gate crasher" items - even smaller stores will offer this.
But you're probably talking specifically about digital, so here's an example MailChimp offered free domains for up to 5 years to create awareness that they did more than just emails and at the same time were targeting the spur of entrepreneurship that happened as people were laid off and trying to start their own businesses. They followed those sign ups with a drip campaign focused on getting all the tools a business would need to start up properly - and while I don't have any numbers to back up that it was a success, I'm sure they converted quite a bit of business from it - of course that was a unique moment in time, so hard for them to pull off again - but it shows free giveaways can lead to long business - especially if you hit the right audience at the right time.
To do it effectively, you need to have a strategy for what you're going to do to nuture and convert the people who come in from the free giveaway. Problem is that free creates a mentality in people and attracts people who have no intention of spending - especially in the digital world.
In the real world, black Friday is a perfect example of this in action - the job is to get people into retail stores, because once they're inside - they know people will want to buy other things. So they give out "door stopper" or "gate crasher" items - even smaller stores will offer this.
But you're probably talking specifically about digital, so here's an example MailChimp offered free domains for up to 5 years to create awareness that they did more than just emails and at the same time were targeting the spur of entrepreneurship that happened as people were laid off and trying to start their own businesses. They followed those sign ups with a drip campaign focused on getting all the tools a business would need to start up properly - and while I don't have any numbers to back up that it was a success, I'm sure they converted quite a bit of business from it - of course that was a unique moment in time, so hard for them to pull off again - but it shows free giveaways can lead to long business - especially if you hit the right audience at the right time.
Castamir
BANNED
- Sep 4, 2019
- 1,200
- 1,053
That was a hot one. The "nurture and convert" part stood out to me.
What I made out of it is to create a design flow that squeeze more value out of the visitors from the giveaway.
What other implementation do you know?
- Jan 23, 2015
- 4,462
- 9,100
This is so true...
I've spent some time doing Twitter giveaways and was a part of that huge community.
I was getting ridiculous analytics numbers, brutal engagements, etc...
Anyway, trying to sell something to those people in that situation is hard as hell, the same goes for sites.
Unfortunately, the fact is that these people would not sit for 5, 6+ hours a day and RT/Like/Follow/Click or whatever during all that time and try to be as active as possible in order to earn something, while still having money, not all of them but, mostly.
On the other side, if you target a T1 country and a quality plan is made, a giveaway can serve as a perfect boost, in which case you will speed up the whole growth process by 4, 5, 6+ times.
It is very important that you do not put giveaways as the main focus, because in that case you will get people and clicks very quickly, but you will not have conversions, or you will, but very small ones.
So, make a quality plan through which you will implement all this without at the same time building a business that will be recognized strictly as a giveaway.