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Who doesn’t love free stuff?

Giveaways are a tested-and-trusted way of getting people’s attention. You can cut through some of the planet’s toughest skins by offering them something they would really appreciate, for free.

The catch with gifts is that they’re more likely to make an impact if they are the sort of thing their recipients would consider valuable. You might send young children over the moon with a free packet of sweets, but those packets might not be the ultimate gifts for corporate clients who you’re trying to strengthen ties with.

Maybe you already know what brilliant things you could achieve with giveaways, but you aren’t willing or able to spend money on gifts. Or perhaps you’d like to give out something that will actually stand a chance of attracting the particular kind of people you’re targeting.

There’s at least a class of items that fits these criteria- free, useful content. We’re talking ebooks, templates, and links to other useful resources that your specific audience can (and would want to) use.

Some Kinds of Content You Could Give Away

1. Ebooks

Ebooks containing helpful explanations and technical guides could be appreciated by the audience you want to reach (as we have already noted).

You can write an ebook, save it as a PDF, and distribute it as a gift to visitors to your website when they sign up for your newsletters.

It’s worth stressing that your ebook has to be something that solves a problem for the people will be reading it (read: meets a need). The more pressing or perennial that problem is, the better your chances of attracting interest with the book.

Again, if you’re not sure you have the time (or ability) to create an ebook of the kind that’ll lure people in, you can get a ghostwriter to do that for you.  

2. Templates

If your customers have trouble with fashioning out official emails, writing business plans, preparing a CV, or creating any other business documents, they would be pleased to have a layout that they can use to make these things.

If you run a marketing agency, you could create a template for business blog posts or promotional copy. And if yours is a firm targeting job seekers, a CV or resume template might be the right thing to share.      

3. Useful Links and Resources

Imagine that someone just delivered a month’s household supplies to you and told you that you wouldn’t be paying anything for it. How would you feel?

Now, think how pleased your customers would be if they were delivered resources that helped them with several aspects of their lives and businesses, for free.

You can share these resources as you would newsletters- in fact, you can share newsletters that contain them. There are a plethora of these things you can put out: access to top websites which might otherwise require a subscription to read; contacts of important agencies and individuals in the industries your customers might be interested in; or even ‘ultimate lists‘ of free digital tools.

Why You Should Consider Giving Out Free Content

The good thing about these items is that you can make them yourself if you have the skills required to create them. If you can’t, you might have to pay a copywriter or graphics designer to get them done. But because they are basically shareable digital content, you’ll only have to do that once.

When you have the material ready, you can share it with as many persons and for as many times as you like. It won’t ‘run out’- a problem you could have with other kinds of gift material.

Ideally, these giveaways will be things that your customers will want to use. So if you’re a digital marketer and your clients are businesses that do a lot of their interaction with potential customers on Instagram, you can share an ebook containing a lot of tips for their Instagram marketing efforts. It will attract the exact kind of people you’re looking for- small business owners who want to leverage social media, and who might need your services.

What’s more, your content could establish you as an expert, someone who knows a lot about a subject matter. And when you’re a good source of useful information, people who need it will come to you for more.

Final Words

There are other ways to get your potential client’s attention or appreciate them for being loyal to your brand. You’ll find a lot of them in some of our previous (and upcoming) posts here. But distributing free content might be the one that suits you at this time. Try it out, and see how well it can work for you.

Featured image source: PensXpress


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This article was first published on 13th August 2019

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.


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