15 replies to this topic

[rolf]

We've been discussing ways to increase subscribers to our mailing list, one of the ideas that has come up is those 'free stuff' sites you can find all over the place.

Subscribers to our list get 2 free ebooks, so we would qualify for a lot of these types of sites, and the nature of the ebooks would bring somewhat targeted subscribers, so it's quite an attractive prospect, but we're concerned about damaging our public image.

To explain, qualifying for a lot of the free offers means providing an email address, which may well get spammed by the people who run the site and/or the people who are giving the free stuff away. We would avoid any sites that collect an address on our behalf and we would never spam subscribers ourselves, so that's not really the concern, but we are concerned about the perception of companies within this arena, which may be seen as 'a bit spammy' - or worse.

Is this a legitimate concern? Do you think this would be a good way to get subscribers? Has anyone used these types of sites for promotion? Would anyone like to share their perception of these types of promotions?

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts :-)

[MaKa]

That's an interesting idea. I haven't looked around free sites a lot since I stopped being a student. Do they all require you to signup with an account? From what I remember most of them where just big directories of links to free stuff.

[rolf]

It does seem to be largely, as you say, just directories of offers with direct links. That's the sort we'd be interested in anyway. We wouldn't let them sign people up for us, so there would be no chance of our list subscribers being bombarded with spam for signing up.

[Scottie]

Hard to say...is there anything of value already listed on those sites? I don't think I'd want to list my offerings in a sea of spammy offers...

[rolf]

is there anything of value already listed on those sites?

Depends on how you define value, but yes, there are real brand name products on offer. When my other half first got into the Internet she signed up for loads of offers found on these types of sites and ended up receiving many samples, and sometimes full sized packets, of everthing from cat food to shampoo to tea - plus a heap of junk mail, of course.

I don't think I'd want to list my offerings in a sea of spammy offers...

That's our main reservation about it really, we don't want to be associated with spammy practices, however we know there are some genuinely good offers of free stuff and anyone who signs up for our offer will already be spending money within the market we're targeting.

[smc_online]

I usually ask myself "is this something I would do offline" to promote my business? If not, than I steer clear of it. For example, would I place one of my business cards on the bulletin board of my local laundry mat. In this case, I would not. Because the laundry mat patrons are not my target audience.

I am from the mindset that marketing online has parallels to the strategies used to promote brick-and_mortar efforts. The difference is the procedure, technique, or way of doing the marketing.

[ACpeter]

Here's a couple of comments that may only be worth what you paid for them, but what the heck!

1- Although it may not be correct, people may judge you by the company you keep. Are you comfortable?

2- If you haven't done so recently, try asking a teen and a bricks and mortor business person what value the internet is. You may be surprised at the split in priorities! In fact, the last 'teen' or near teen that I talked to enlightened me on a bunch of things that I never dreamed of. Mind you, none of them were money making operations... but none the less, the sites are 'their' internet.

Just some food for thought. Hope it helps!

[Scottie]

Rolf, your site is looking loads more interesting these days!

If the offers reflect things your target audience is looking for, it wouldn't hurt to try it out. If your target audience is women with cats and the "free stuff" site you are considering also caters to women (ie, samples of personal hygiene products, household products, hosiery) it would definitely be worth trying.

If the free stuff is like "Make thousands of dollars on the Internet a Day with Our Free EBook" I'd steer clear.

[rolf]

I usually ask myself "is this something I would do offline" to promote my business?

Interesting point, this really got me thinking. The closest real world example I can think of is the samples bin at the local Pets At Home shop, and I'd have to say yes, we would definitely get free samples into that bin given the opportunity.

Although it may not be correct, people may judge you by the company you keep

Yes, a very legitimate concern, and the reason we want to tread with caution on this.

If you haven't done so recently, try asking a teen and a bricks and mortor business person what value the internet is.

Great idea, I'll definitely be doing this. Would you care to share/summarise any of the feedback you got from your own research?

Both your points are certainly worth more than I paid for them

your site is looking loads more interesting these days!

Thank you, the feedback we got here has helped no end with improvements and there's still a few more changes waiting in the wings.

If your target audience is women with cats and the "free stuff" site you are considering also caters to women

So far I've been categorising them into 3 categories - 1. Sites for cat/pet owners 2.general free stuff which includes pet products 3. general free stuff sites that do not currently offer pet products (I suppose also the 4th category of 'general spammy rubbish' but we're not going to even consider these ones). There seems to be a decent number of all 3 types but we're going to target type 1 first and see what happens.

I haven't searched for sites targeting women, but it's a good idea (and somewhat obvious now it's been pointed out to me ) so I'll add it to the list of preparations.

Thanks to eveyone for the feedback, any further input is welcome.

[Michael Martinez]

If you have free stuff to offer and there are free stuff directories that will link to you for free with concise, accurate descriptive text, then you should take advantage of those resources. People will appreciate and remember quality and value.

A lot of free stuff is worthless, but there are many bargain hunters out there who sift through piles and piles of junk, looking for the lost gold.

[Carophilly]

About 8 months ago I launched a pay-per-click ad campaign on Google and Yahoo for a client with a pet health site. We were offering free samples of a dog-deworming medication.

We never considered the freebie sites, and wouldn't have, but they discovered us! In the end, we had far more requests for free samples from the freebie sites than from our ads. In a way, it supplemented our ad campaign because the requests kept rolling in long after our daily budget for the ads had been depleted.

Our client was able to collect data from these customers, and it does not appear to have harmed the company's reputation in any way.

My advice would be to research and select a freebie site carefully. Having done that though, there's a good chance that the others will find you and add you whether you like it or not, as they did to us. Remember also that some people just get a kick out of getting free stuff and may not be qualified customers. Some order from different email addresses and resell stuff on eBay. It's a crazy world out there! Make sure your ebooks have strong copyright clauses.

In the end, I don't believe the freebie sites did us any harm though.

[bewarne]

Over the years two of our clients who offered free stuff, were picked up by these sites. Suddenly they had more requests than they knew what to do with. That sounds good, right. Well, both found it wasn't good. Seems that 99% of the people coming from these sites just wanted something for free and weren't interested in the particular product and were not useful contacts to have. And our clients couldn't deal with the incoming mail - 2000 requests over a weekend (in addition to their regular mail), for instance, which means their mail box filled up and normal clients couldn't get through. There did not at that time seem to be a way to get off the free sites and so our clients had to drop the offers which means they could no longer offer free samples to real prospects as any new page they created got found pretty quickly by the sites. So, from a practical standpoint, maybe it isn't as good an idea as it might look to be.

[rolf]

Interesting stuff.

I can appreicate how in the given situations this could be a bad thing, but in our situation I think it would be rather good. The free gift is a download that is from a server with plenty of bandwidth, and the admin is virtually zero as the signup and download processes, and the associated emails, are all automated.

The ebooks are very specifically cat themed and I don't think even the hardiest of bargain hunters would bother to download them if they had absolutely no interest in cats. Even if several thousand people sign up, get the downloads and then most of them unsubscribe, we've still got our company name and some of our products in front of that many cat owners' eyeballs and gained a few interested subscribers.

Over all, we've come to the conclusion that the potential benefits outweigh the potential pitfalls so we're going to have a go and see what happens. If anything interesting happens I'll update this thread.

Don't take this as a closing of the conversation, I'm still interested to hear any opinions or advice.

Thanks everyone

[MaKa]

I just had a couple of ideas for other free "digital" stuff that this could work with. I'm definitely interested to hear about your results rolf, before I start spending (a lot of) time creating digital goodies.

[webdec]

I too would stay clear of these "freebie" sites. I'm sure there are legitimate ones but chances are most of them are spammy and you wouldn't want your business or your clients to get caught up in that.

If it were me, I would offer unique freebies that are branded with my company name instead of someone else's stuff. I think what you are offering now is great. If you feel like you need to offer more to get more response, maybe you should consider changing or alternating the offer. Have you ever tried holding a contest? A visitor can be eligible to win a prize if they sign up.

Sometimes, lack of response could be in the wording. You could consider changing the headline or text to emphasize the value of your offer. Make the visitor want it. You could have "limited time" offers.

Just my 2 cents.