Giving prospective customers a free service/product does a few things for your business:
1. You get people to give you a ‘try’. It’s important that you make it easy for people to sample your product and services. One of the wisest investments you can make is actually giving away a sampling of your services or product (as long as it delivers everything it promises).
2. If you have a lot of backend sales potential and high repeat business, then getting as many people as possible to start using your product or service is vitally important. Take a look at America Online. AOL will give away 100, 200 or even 500 free hours of Internet service. That’s how they’ve grown to be the largest Internet Service Provider. Once people become AOL users it’s just easier to keep using AOL so they lock-in $19.95/month forever!
3. Using packaging and up-sells you can see an immediate profit from customers coming in to redeem their free services.
4. You also add more qualified names to your mailing list. These are all people who are interested in your services. Then you can continually work these prospects through your direct mail efforts.