When is the right time to give something away for free?

Giving away your products or services for free isn’t sustainable, yet when used correctly, it can be very useful.

Everyone likes getting things for free. The word ‘free’ carries considerable clout for any business, but it comes at a major cost.

When you offer a freebie, it needs to be done in a tasteful manner. You shouldn’t just give things away for free without having a reason for doing so – your customers should earn it.

So when’s the right time to offer your products or services for free?

Use your freebies to incentivise a subscription/upsell

According to research, 81% of customers expect free shipping options. For most businesses, covering the cost of free delivery for every order isn’t viable, so how do you keep the customer happy without making a loss?

Providing a threshold to qualify for free delivery can solve this – this will give your customers an incentive to spend more.

Around 60% of customers will add more items to their shopping cart to qualify for free delivery, so be sure to mention the upsell of free delivery throughout your website.

Capitalise on free products/services to build customer loyalty

Building customer loyalty is one of the key tactics all businesses should take into consideration to boost sales.

By encouraging customers to come back and earn free delivery, an extra free item, or a bolt-on to service is a great way to keep customers loyal – it stops them from visiting your competitors.

Use freebies to shift your inventory

Holding inventory can make up around 45-90% of a business’ outlay! So if you have plenty of winter stock still lying around when summer is on its way, a buy one get one free strategy might just be the way forward!

You could even include a smaller product as a freebie in mail orders to make the customer feel more special – without letting them know you just want to free up some space in your warehouse.

Read and comment on the original Econsultancy article.