There are a lot of com­pan­ies that offer ser­vices for FREE such as ‘45 minute brand/​web apprais­als’ in order to attract new cus­tom­ers. But the down­side is that giv­ing time for FREE under­val­ues what you provide.

The most import­ant thing to remem­ber is that time is pre­cious and you must use it wisely. Cre­ate some­thing that provides edu­ca­tional value to give away, which is much more power­ful in keep­ing you at the fore­front of your market.

If you cre­ate some­thing that gen­er­ates a buzz and is FREE, more people will want to know about who you are and what you do.

Here are the vital things to remem­ber in order to make the most out of offer­ing some­thing for FREE.

• Give some­thing of value and of import­ance to the mar­ket you are tar­get­ing. Make sure it is inform­at­ive and easy to under­stand. In doing so, this will high­light your cred­ib­il­ity and recog­ni­tion within your field of expert­ise. It also helps to show your per­son­al­ity and what your brand represents.

• Offer­ing some­thing valu­able and enga­ging for FREE, builds loy­alty. If you build a rap­port, people under­stand what you do. This can help to grow your net­works and cap­ture new con­tacts that are inter­ested in what you say.

• Use this tac­tic as an oppor­tun­ity for sales, not to bom­bard people but to show that you know what you’re talk­ing about and it is worth listen­ing to.

• Use the cor­rect ter­min­o­logy in order to grab atten­tion and stand out. Say ‘down­load this for FREE’ instead of ‘email info@… for your FREE guide’.

• Addi­tion­ally, see FREE as being cost effect­ive. The main com­mit­ment is research into your topic. Fol­low­ing this how­ever, comes the bene­fit of see­ing how many people are inter­ested in what you have to offer and how your ideas can expand to reach a wider audience.

• Giv­ing things away for FREE is a meas­ur­able tool. You can see how many people have down­loaded or reques­ted what you have to offer. This is use­ful for you to see which top­ics are strong and insight­ful to audi­ences, which in turn will allow you to con­cen­trate on your efforts on fur­ther top­ics rel­ev­ant to your industry.

• Stay­ing vis­ible is key in mak­ing sure that you are rel­ev­ant and you stand by a strong mes­sage or premise. Show that you’re a ‘can do’ per­son giv­ing things away for FREE is bene­fi­cial for both parties.

The final thing to remem­ber is that giv­ing things away for free will make you stand out against your com­pet­i­tion. Not every­one will offer some­thing for free but doing so will gen­er­ate more traffic to your web­site, social net­works and to your business.

If it’s mean­ing­ful it becomes powerful.

P.S. If you’d like to down­load one of our FREE guides, just click on the images at the top of the page.

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