Before you start a freebie or free sample marketing campaign, write out the entire campaign in a marketing plan. Writing it out in a marketing plan will allow you to sort out your thoughts more clearly and spot potential pitfalls early on. It also makes communication easier. It makes it easier to get approval to execute a free sample marketing plan. It makes it easier to communicate to your subordinates. It helps organize the efforts of everyone on the team.
So what should your freebie marketing plan include?
Your Target Market
Who is your target market? Giving away free samples to people who aren’t in your target market is an enormous waste of money. For example, handing out your product on the street randomly is probably not going to net you a positive return.
Instead, you should focus on figuring out who your target market is and how you plan on getting your product to them.
Are you targeting distributors and retailers? In that case, you might want to hand out free samples at a trade show. Is your target market health conscious? In that case, you might want to hand out free samples at your Farmer’s Market.
Figure out where your target market spends their time and try to get your free samples in their hands.
Contact Information & Follow Up
Next, include how you plan on getting their contact information and how you plan on following up with them.
If you’re not following up with your free sample marketing, you’re losing out on a huge part of your potential return. Yes, some customers will still buy. However, the majority of your sales will come from successfully following up on the leads you gathered.
As part of your marketing plan, specify how you plan on getting contact information. One common tactic is to give away free samples, but only after they agree to give you their name and email address. You can also give away free samples in exchange for likes and follows using mobile apps.
Once you have their contact information, you need a solid plan for following up with them. For low ticket sales, this might involve an automated email and social media marketing campaign. For high ticket sales, this might include email followup, phone followup and direct mail followup.
Choosing the Right Products to Give Away
There are a few things to consider when you’re deciding your giveaway products.
What would make the best impression? How can you use your giveaways to help form a strong brand impression in people who’ve never heard of you before?
Cost considerations. How much is a lifetime customer worth to you? How likely do you think your free gift is to convert into a customer? And what’s the cost of the item you’re giving away, including the man hours of staffing your giveaway campaign? Your gain from lifetime customer value needs to significantly outweigh your costs.
What would naturally lead to upsells? For example, Gillette used to give away razors for free – But you had to buy the refills, which were quite expensive.
What do you have in inventory? Free giveaways can be a great way to get rid of excess inventory. However, whatever you give away has to be something you could sell for money. It can’t be junk products you just have sitting around. A great example of a good free giveaway is how AT&T gives away free (with contract) refurbished iPhones. The phones still have a lot of value, which is why people love the free gift.
Tracking Your Results
Finally, you need a way to track your results. Come up with the metrics with which you want to measure your success. These metrics could be actual sales, they could be phone numbers, they could be email addresses or they could be social media follows.
The key is that you have a metric that can be tracked directly back to your free giveaway efforts. Never launch a free sample marketing campaign without knowing exactly how you’ll tell whether it was a success or a failure.
If you target the right audience, give away the right gift, get their contact information, follow up and track your results, you have a very strong chance of your giveaway campaign being a success.
Isaac, author of this article works for Thunderfap.com. If you’re interested in getting free samples, free stuff and freebies, visit ThunderFap today.
Want to read about how to Brand your Business?