Ready for one of the most successful marketing campaigns you’ve ever unleashed?

Then get ready to give away your product.

Winners do it

Look at the Winter Olympics. Freebies were everywhere at the Olympics. Companies gave water bottles, coats, equipment and more to athletes. All this in hopes that their brand would reach homes and offices around the world.

You say you can’t afford to give away products to the global community?

Well, if making sales is your goal, you can afford freebies to qualified customers.

Consider Vermont, U.S. based Ben & Jerry’s Every year they give away a free scoop of ice cream to anyone and everyone who comes into their stores.

Important: they also give away coupons customers can—and do—use for future purchases.

Marketing isn’t a lost cost!

I’m through trying to convince business owners that their marketing budgets are not spending sinkholes. Marketing is an investment. If you’re still stuck in the sinkhole mentality, quit reading now. I’m picking my battles. But do feel free to come back if you ever change your mind.

For the rest of us, giveaways are lead gen. We know when we give good stuff away for free, we’ll cross-sell and up-sell products, services and add-ons. We’ll make sales we wouldn’t otherwise have made. If people like the product, they’ll come back. With their credit cards.

It’s called lifetime value.

How much does a scoop of ice cream cost Ben & Jerry’s compared with the lifetime value of a customer?

Believe in what you sell

If your product is crap, please don’t give it away. It will kill your business. Really, why are you even trying to sell it?

For a giveaway to be successful, it has to be something a customer would pay for. If they don’t value it, they’ll put it in a drawer and forget about it. (They probably won’t do that with the ice cream.)

Promote the free product

The giveaway needs to be a full-on marketing initiative. Make your audience aware of it and make them want it.

Enthusiasm starts with you. Generate buzz and create excited buyers who will talk about you. Use social media to get the word out through your audience’s networks.

I know a guy who ran a prepared meal business ‘restaurant dishes at your kitchen table’ or something similar was the tag line. He knew that once someone tried his meals they would come back and try more but his concept was new and he was having real trouble getting new customers to buy his food. So he gave it away. He gave them – for free – a couple of his best meals..and he went back the following week and sold ‘em lots more. Smart strategy.

Remove hurdles

If the product is free, but getting it is complicated, customers won’t respond. Make it easy. Capture contact information, but don’t make customers fill out detailed forms or give you their life story. That generates attrition, not loyalty.

Up-sell and cross-sell

Never give away a product and leave it to the customer to come back to you. Never. If the giveaway is high value, be ready to follow up and to make the sale.

If your product is less expensive, use incentives like coupons, offers and more giveaways with additional purchases.

Don’t forget service!

So you give away a great product, generate buzz and make it easy for the customer to get the freebie. Then they come to your store or talk to a sales rep via the phone or email, only to be treated rudely. Yikes! They may take the giveaway, but they’ll never, ever buy from you.

This strategy works when you know that customers love what you do. When you know that once someone tries your product or service they’ll be hooked. That’s the situation when this approach blasts your sales and your profits into orbit.

So do they?

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