A tactic of traditional stores to attract customers can work perfectly to attract visitors to your website. You may have seen this method used on other websites, but few use it to its full potential.
The tactic is to give something for free, but we have to choose carefully what to give and how to maximize the value of each visitor who takes advantage of this gift.
This point will give us perspective in the selection of what we give for free, as well as getting the most out of each visitor. And it ends with information on using free resources on the Internet to promote your website (and its free offering).
First, we must choose carefully what we give for free. The more unusual it is, the more likely it is that Internet users will take the time to visit your website. Also, it goes without saying that the higher the value of the free item, the more attention it will attract.
However, value in the mind of the person looking for free does not mean that it means more money in your budget.
Some things, like screensavers, are so commonly distributed for free that Internet users expect them to be free and if they are not original they will not attract the slightest bit. The same can be said of certain free services, such as digital postcards or information that can be found in other places on the web.
Getting the attention of Internet users with information or content that can be distributed electronically is very profitable, but difficult, due to the number of websites that offer similar things. This is why what you offer has to be useful and of quality for your potential client.
This is what happens for example on my website with my newsletter. People who pass by my website are interested in ideas, information to promote their website, therefore I offer a free subscription to a newsletter.
In a year, about 5,000 people have subscribed and only about 400 have been deleted, which indicates that people find useful in this tool that helps me to be in contact with my potential clients, they know me and when they decide to deepen in the Internet marketing and decide to buy a book on the subject, they take an interest in mine and eventually buy it.
It is also very effective to use a tangible item that you can send by traditional mail, as long as you can minimize the cost of shipping each item (stamps).
Some of the things that are most commonly distributed for free are mouse mats, T-shirts, and I have even seen on TV (in Spain) recently that a stock exchange website gave away a wireless mouse when you made your first transaction. The downside of these items is that they are relatively expensive and are not affordable for many budgets.
If a customer's value is high enough to justify it, you can use a high-cost item (originality is still important). However, if you are not sure whether the search engines for free things are on your potential customers or the acquisition value of a customer is low, it is best to keep the cost per item to a minimum.
In general, if there is something that you can distribute electronically, allowing people to download or view it on your website and unique enough, this will be your best option.
Once you have selected what you are going to give for free, the next step is to maximize the value of each visitor who comes to your website looking for the free object. Often, a website will have a page or form that deals only with the free object and that's it.
However, you must ensure that each visitor is given the maximum opportunity to learn about your company and encourage them to visit us again as well as add our website (on their home page) to their favorites.
The page where the free item is offered should include the logo, two or three sentences that describe your website or company and the benefits it can provide to a customer, a small group of links to the main areas of your website (especially those where we are more interested that you visit) and the form to fill out.
This is because visitors can enter through any subpage and then access the page of the free item, without having gone through your main page.
The form should ask for your name, address (if and only if you have to send something by mail), how did you hear about our free item and what you like the most about our website.
In my case, the only thing I ask to get the free newsletter is to send a blank email to an auto responder, where it will be stored. Weekly, I collect the incoming emails and add them to the list server (this is no longer the case and the email is automatically collected on my list server).
One thing to encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter is that by sending the blank subscription email, you will receive an interesting article in a few seconds. This is what is called "immediate satisfaction" and it increases the desire to subscribe: the system immediately sends the article "7 ways to develop sales on your website" as a response.
Do not ask for more information than necessary, but many people will not give it to you, among other things because they do not know you and people do not like to give their data just like that.
Another thing that can be done is to ask for the essentials first, for example the email, and once we have it, after the client presses the button to send the form, we take him to another (technically it is easy to implement), where he we say take time to give us your details.
If you want, better, and if not, we already have your email, which was the most important information.
As I said, it is important to ask what you liked the most about our website, this provides us with feedback or comments that will help us understand what visitors are liking the most.
Once you have your free item and your section on your website ready, you must promote it.
I remember when I had my newsletter ready, that my main marketing mission was to promote the newsletter, since only the visits I had on my website was not enough, therefore what I did was write articles to send to the owners of other more established lists for it to be published and my signature to be seen with the subscription invitation.
Another form of promotion was participating in discussion lists and newsgroups related to my field.
Do not forget to subscribe the free item sheet in the search engines, many of them will index it and provide you with visitors who access your website through that "door".
