5 Free Offers That Can Generate a Response from Your Web Visitors
Some products and services lend themselves to a simple one-step sale on the internet. Every day shoppers purchase office supplies, travel tickets, birdfeeders, books, and millions of other small and large items with one click (or short series of clicks) online.
But when it comes to purchasing items like cruise ships or housing properties, or more complex items like medical services or custom-made tennis shoes, a sale can often be helped along by creating a smaller, one-click offer that puts the client directly into the lead pipeline without requiring that they commit to the entire purchase immediately.
Below are 5 ways to get your web visitor to start down the path of a more complex purchase with a simple free offer.
1. Offer a Free Estimate
This particular free offer works if the item or service being purchased is somewhat customized or complicated. For example, Calvert Creative builds websites for clients, but there’s a vast difference between a 500 page shopping-based site and a simpler 8 page website for a local dentist. A single-field form (“Enter Your Email”) for a free estimate helps the interested potential clients open the door to a sale.
2. Offer a Free Demonstration or Trial
You’ll see this particular tactic on a variety of software sites (“Take the Free Tour!”). It also works well for unusual or complex products like water carbonators or specialized sewing machines. This also might work as a 7 day free trial.
3. Give Away Free Samples
Sometimes the best way to build interest in a product is to give a away a free sample of the product to interested buyers. This is prominent among vitamins and health supplements, and is frequently used with weight-loss products. There may be a shipping cost to cover, but typically the best free sample offers give significant value in order to “sweeten” the deal.
4. Offer a Free Gift
Free gift offers can have the effect of decreasing the overall value of your prospects, but it also builds prospect and email lists quickly. Ebooks, whitepapers and other reports are frequent free gifts used to incentivize a web visitor to fill out a form or join a list, as are gift cards. How many times have you seen “Free iPad!” cross your Twitter or Facebook stream? There are even entire companies built around the idea of offering free gifts in return for engagement.
5. Offer a Sales Call
This particular tactic frequently has a lower response factor, but if you were in the business of selling enterprise-level IP telephony systems, for example, you might ask web visitors to sign up so that a sales person could call and explain the details a large corporation would need to know in order to make a further decision about the service.
Of course there are many ways to make your web pages sticky so that visitors stay longer and take action, just as there are dozens (if not hundreds) of free offers that will help your web pages convert.
Is your company using free offers to get responses from your web visitors and drive revenue? Calvert Creative can give you a free estimate (see how that works?) for building an incentive program that adds to your prospect list and your income. Give us a call toll-free at 877-495-6851 to see how we can help.
