Free is Great Marketing
I realized today how valuable offering something for free is as a free marketing solution. Think about it: people love free stuff, and by offering some freebies on your site, you can easily build a returning user base to your website.
I have been testing it out here on Linkative, by offering a free software that allows webmasters to search high PageRank blogs from specific keywords to gain backlinks from. The results from offering something for free on this blog alone have been very successful.
Look at open source software sites, another prime example of how free is great marketing. Invision Power Board, a leading forum software application, was once a great free forum software that built its userbase by offering its software for free – and then they went paid.
Free is great marketing for any niche. I’d really recommend testing it out on your own website. Offer something for free that you custom made, a service, or a popular your visitors may find very useful.
Posted in Marketing
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Free isn’t always free. How many offers are there where you get the first month free, but then automatically get subscribed for $19.95 a month and have to jump through hoops to unsubscribe? Things like that are making people distrust the word free.
Do a Google search for “free” and notice all the spam. I don’t know what the answer is, maybe some text about “this really is free – no hidden strings”?
I like the way the comment box changes color when you mouse over it!
July 7th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Hello.
Yes, free is not always free. The way most companies market “free” nowadays always has a catch to ensure the company somehow makes profit from majority of the users downloading what free content or software is available to them.
However, actually offering something for free on your website (without a catch, charge, etc) is a great way to market your site.
Obviously this can be the source of success for very popular open source software such as phpBB.