Yours FREE — My Gift to You!
November 30th, 2010 by Bob Bly
YOURS FREE ? MY GIFT TO YOU!
Did the above headline catch your attention?
I wrote it to demonstrate this issue?s marketing lesson: The word ?FREE? is the most powerful word in direct marketing.
Always has been. Still is today. Will still be 10 years from now, in my opinion.
?I saw someone use FREE effectively on Ebay recently,? copywriter Charlie Byrne told me in an e-mail the other day. ?Rocker Jimmy Buffett is coming to town. His fans love to party ? especially with Corona beer, the one you squeeze limes into.?
There are MANY tickets for the concert on sale on Ebay. If you look at the listings, you’ll see:
?Buffett Tickets for sale!?
?Jimmy Buffett – Good seats.?
?Buffett Tix for sale.?
…ad infinitum…
But one clever person wrote:
?Buffett Tickets + Free Corona and Limes!!!?
If you buy the tickets, he throws in a $10 gift certificate for the local Florida supermarket chain.
Charlie adds: ?I noticed his ad got MANY more ?hits? than all the others ? another demonstration of the power of a FREE offer.?
In his new book, ?How to Turn Words Into Money,? millionaire entrepreneur and master direct marketer Ted Nicholas devotes quite a bit of space to discussing the power of FREE.
?I?ve never sold anything that didn?t sell better after offering free bonuses and gifts,? says Ted. ?Free is the most powerful word in the English language. If you?re not using gifts and bonuses in your marketing operations now, your sales in many cases will go up 2, 3, and 4 times.?
One of my friends worked in a medical ad agency. The clients were large pharmaceutical manufacturers targeting doctors with promotions about new drugs.
The agency used direct mail to invite doctors to free seminars (called ?symposia?) ? educational programs about the diseases the drugs treated, designed to get the doctors to prescribe the drug as treatment for the diseases.
The agency split-tested a straightforward invitation vs. a version that offered a free gift ? a pocket day planner ? as an incentive to attend the event. The wholesale cost of the pocket calendar, including imprint of the client?s logo, was about $1 each.
The invitations offering doctors the free $1 pocket calendar generated 6 times the response from doctors (all of whom back then were making handsome six-figure annual incomes) than the invitation that didn?t offer the free gift.
That?s 6 times the results ? just because of the offer of a little free gift ? something the doctor might very well toss in the trash if it arrived unsolicited in the mail.
I get asked at least once a week the following question: ?Bob, hasn?t free lost its power??
The person asking the question is concerned that, because of overuse and increasing sophistication of readers, FREE is not effective any more.
My answer is always this: FREE alone is not enough today to make a promotion profitable. In the early days of direct marketing, perhaps it was.
But now there are so many people advertising FREE, that simply saying FREE does not make you stand out. You need something more, like a powerful benefit or unique selling proposition ? or a masterfully written promotion.
But once you have those things, combine them with a FREE offer. Saying ?free? still, even today, increases response significantly vs. the same copy without stressing a free offer.
Bottom line: FREE still works in advertising. Use FREE for yourself and see!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 at 3:57 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 2nd, 2010 at 3:37 am
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January 4th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
I agree that FREE is a powerful word. I will also admit I struggle with how to use it in a dignified fashion for B2b copywriting purposes.
January 14th, 2011 at 2:42 am
Absolutely true. If you really want convince your potential customer about the efficacy or reliability, always give them free samples for them to try on.
January 31st, 2011 at 6:55 pm
Out of everything on your navbar, the first thing I clicked was this link and it was halfway down. Awesome way to demonstrate the point the page is trying to make!
March 27th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Bob,
My name is Mark and I’m a Health and Leanness Expert.
To build my list I use a free 6 part video course on fat burning:
http://www.tsmethod.com/blog/
So there’s the free offer with a promise to deliver weight loss tips in six video phases.
Does that about fit the bill?
I would value your opinion.
Thanks,
Mark
P.S.
Really like your work Bob, you’re one of the best in my book !;-)
April 5th, 2011 at 3:26 am
Free didn’t catch my attention. It was because it come from YOU (Bob Bly) — free from a burglar? Sorry. Free from someone I know and trust. Hmm, wonder what that is? 🙂
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