How giving things away for free can make you money

Businesses are finding it harder every year to make money, especially smaller ones. More people are buying goods from overseas through the internet cutting out the local retailer. The big companies are more aggressive with their marketing and are now reaching in to marketplaces that were not worth their time a decade ago. Generally people are not as spending as much as they did, and they are being more careful with what they do have to spend. It is becoming harder and harder to make money, so why am I suggesting that you giving away stuff can make you money? Because it can, if you know what to give away to encourage people to spend their money with you

This article was prompted by a message from the garage that I get my car serviced. With the changes in the WOF, many garages have lost a lot of their regular business they had under the old system. My garage decided to be preemptive by now offering a free vehicle inspection between the WOFs. This will get them a lot of work because you can guarantee that a lot of the cars they will inspect will need at least some minor work done which people will pay for ‘since the car is already there’ and recouping the labour cost of doing all the inspections and making profits on the major service work.

Giving something to a client for free is not to be confused with giving away something as part of an offer, get 4 for the price of 3 for example. That type of thing is simply your standard sales promotion and involves the customer spending money to get the free item. What we are looking at is something that costs the customer nothing, apart from some time as in the case of the garage, in return for the business getting the chance to find income from the perspective client.

So what can you give away that will help you make money? This all depends on the type of business you are in. The classic example is free on site quotes/estimates for trades people (although that is hardly an enticing offer anymore as everyone does it.) They won’t charge your for the time for looking at a prospective job, with the understanding that they can gauge what is needed to be done, see if it is worth their time to do, and work out where they could fit it into the schedules. Reps come in from suppliers to find out what the prospective client needs so they can tailor a package for them. Retailers will give away a sample or do a demonstration to people who may buy their products, like the food samples you get in supermarkets. Even something as simple as offering free advice over the phone to someone can help generate income, because you will be remembered as that helpful company they will call on when they need that product or service. In return you get to grab details of people that you can then use for later marketing.

How do you pick what to give away to people. Firstly it must be low or no cost for you, manufacturers will supply demo or samples for such purpose. If its your time it will be the time you are not working for a client anyway so you have already ‘paid’ for the time out of your own income so why not use that time to get more work. For example we here at Copy Express often give print samples away to clients before they pay for the job. It allows them to make sure that they a happy with it before we commit to the full run and it allows us spot any possible costly issues before we spend the money printing the order. If your business is ‘white collar,’ then offering such things as free or low cost events that people can attend is a great ‘freebie’ that can give you leads you need for new clients.

The key point to remember with this giving away of time or goods is to build a relationship with a client that you can then use to keep them in your mind and for them to have good will for you. The very article you are reading is an example of the free things to build that good will. We spend 15 or more hours a month: preparing, writing, sending out to our clients and uploading to Copy Express. That’s not a small amount of salary being paid for something that we give away to everyone. It’s an investment in people we have worked with and those we have yet to know to help them grow their business. In return we feel that will come to us when they need more advice like this as well as everything else we can do.