How a FABULOUS FREEBIE will generate new sales

Whatever business you are in – you need sales.

You need income – not just any old sales, you need profitable, sustainable, repeatable or recurring sales.

If you don’t have sales, then you are either a charity or a hobby!

You also need customers, good quality customers

It sounds really obvious but you need good quality customers. By that, I mean customers who value what you deliver and who will pay you on time, in full and not quibble with the price you have set. Customers who will recommend you to others and buy from you again – people who want to buy from you again.

A little refresher – Sales 101

There really are only 4 ways to generate sales.

	Sales Generation	Ease / Speed and Cost
1	Sell existing products/services to existing clients	Easiest, quickest and most cost effective way of making sales
2	Sell existing products/services to new clients	Slightly harder, slower and more expensive as you need to go out and find new clients
3	Sell new products/services to existing clients	Harder, slower and potentially more expensive as you have to develop new products or services and then sell them to your existing clients
4	Sell new products/services to new clients	The hardest, slowest and most expensive option as you have to find your new client and develop your products and services

In every case, you need to communicate with your client or potential new client to tell them about your product or service.

Writing blogs, posting to Facebook, sending out tweets and pinning to Pinterest send messages out to a relatively cold audience, they are interested enough to follow you but may not necessarily be engaging with you.

They won’t see all of your post updates or catch all of your Tweets but they are seeing you pop up in various places which will keep you front of mind, or at least in with a chance when they are in the mood to buy.

Ideally, all of these outbound marketing activities will share the common goals of establishing credibility and buying from you. If they are not ready to buy from you yet – you are driving people to sign up to your list.

You need a list

Your list is arguably one of your most valuable business assets. You need a list of people who have subscribed to your email list and have given you their permission to send your business updates and promotions directly into their inbox.

Your asset is your audience or your tribe

Engaging with your list helps to build their confidence in you, you are talking to them and building your own credibility as the go-to expert in your field – which again keeps you front of mind when your audience is ready to buy.

Amazon and Groupon are great examples of sellers who continually get you to buy more products by emailing offers on a regular basis.

You will need an email marketing tool such as Mailchimp, AWeber or ActiveCampaign. We use ActiveCampaign as it has more sales automation than some of the other email marketing tools.

Ok, so this is all fairly obvious (I hope) but what does that have to do with your fabulous freebie?

You need a Fab Freebie to get people on your list

It would be nice if everyone who read and liked your blog post, Facebook update or Tweet immediately signed up to your list – but not many people will do that.

Sometimes they need a little persuasion.

A brilliant fab freebie will provide something of value – in exchange for the readers contact details. A name and an email address is enough to get them on your list and start engaging with them.

Creating your Fab Freebie

Your fab freebie will be something that you can create once and share often – usually digital. It’s not a free trial of your product or service or a free gift that will cost you money to vive away – that’s a promotion, that’s somehting else. Your fab freebie is a digital give away for getting people on your list. Your fabulous freebie could come in many forms:

a checklist – this could be a webpage with restricted access, or a PDF created in Word, Powerpoint or Canva
a video – you can use a smartphone to record your Top 10 Tips for XYZ, we use a Mac and a WebCam
a webinar – we use PowerPoint or Prezi to create presentations and Screenflow to do the voiceover
a short course – we use Thinkific to host our courses
a printable – we use Word (saved to PDF) or Canva to create these
an ebook – we use Word (saved to PDF) or Canva to create these

It doesn’t matter what form it is in – so long as it is relevant to you and establishes your credibility as the expert in your field and answers a question or solves a problem that your potential customer might have.

Where do I put my fab Freebie?

Everywhere…:

Primarily on your website – and link to it from everywhere…
At the bottom or on the sidebar of your blog posts
In your email signature
On Facebook
On Twitter
On Pinterest
On Instagram
On Linkedin

How your Fabulous Freebie will generate new sales

Remember the 4 ways we identified earlier to create more sales – here is how your Fab Freebie can help you generate more sales :

	Sales Generation	How to use your Fab Freebie to generate sales
1	Sell existing products/services to existing clients	You can use your existing clients to help you generate idea’s for a Fab Freebie You can test your Fab Freebie with your existing customer and ask for testimonials that will encourage more people to sign up for your Fab Freebie As you develop your Fab Freebie – have you identified potential upsells of existing products or services to existing customers?
2	Sell existing products/services to new clients	As people sign up to your Fab Freebie make sure they are opted in to a marketing nurture campaign in your email marketing tool. learn how to use your email marketing tool. Talk to them regularly. Share blog posts, send weekly or monthly updates. Add value and demonstrate your credibility. Then share offers and promotions to convert them to customers.
3	Sell new products/services to existing clients	Use feedback from existing customers to create new products or services that will help existing clients. What would they be willing to pay for that solution? Can you build a course or a book, or create a membership site that will solve issues or problems that your customers have? What knowledge or service do you have, that your customers might need or might want, that you can build a product or service around? You can use your existing clients to build and test beta products and services.
4	Sell new products/services to new clients	Create a Fab Freebie (you’ll be a pro by now) to lead new clients to your new products.

But I don’t have an idea for a Fab Freebie!

Really? I bet you do!

Think about your customer – why do they buy from you? What questions do they ask? What problems do they have that you can solve? What advice do you give your existing customers? If you are not sure – talk to them and ask them what they need from you to help solve their problems.

An acupuncturist – might offer a 7 step guide to managing backpain – one of the steps will of course, be your acupuncture services
A marketer might write an ebook on how to use Pinterest to Drive Sales leading to a one to one consultation
A childcare nursery might offer 5 Top Tips for Getting A Fussy Eater to Eat, 7 Steps to Potty Train Your Toddler, 3 Days to get Your Child to sleep through the night – leading to a nursery placement or afterschool booking
An electrician might have Top 10 Electrical Safety Tips in your Home, Top 10 Electrical Safety Tips in your Business, 6 Steps to Turn Your Home into a Smart Home
An accountant.. well, here are the fab freebies that we have created for our business. They are all mini-courses on Thinkific which means that the customer has to login to access them so we can see how often they use them. We can update, amend and enhance each course and email all subscribers to let them know what has changed quickly and efficiently. These are the same tools we use with our clients so we know that they work and solve a particular need.