I tried Hubspot last week. A month’s free access – $200 value – in exchange for my email address. Because Hubspot knows. They know that when you start getting your “Daily Prospect Digest”, outlining which companies visited your site today, and how many pages they looked at, you’ll be hooked. They know that their service is good. So they give it away.
It used to be that if you produced something really good, you’d sell it for the top dollar. There was an exclusivity factor; supply and demand.
I think that’s changed.
Yes, supply and demand still drive our economy… but the reference point has moved. We can produce virtually anything at a low price point. We can market it and distribute it for next to nothing. (At Actionable, we’ve yet to spend $1 on online advertising). But people have more choices than ever before. The “limited supply” that used to be an important element in the pricing equation has all but disappeared. Not to you, the supplier, of course – you still have limitations on how much you can produce, and when. The buyer (yes, your buyer) can get something similar (if not identical) elsewhere. And they can find it with a few quick keystrokes.
Is this true for everyone? Of course not. There’s the “experience” angle (making the customer’s interaction with you so memorable that they can’t help but promote your product/service, specific to your company). This ties into the importance of Brand, and how marketing dollars really need to be put towards building your ‘tribe’ (to borrow from Seth Godin). People will buy from you because they know, respect and feel connected to your brand.
But they’ll also buy from you if they know exactly what they’re getting… and like it. Like Hubspot. I know nothing about their brand. But their offer intrigued me, and at no risk I decided to take a look. Which means we’ve come full circle – sampling, which is really one of the pillars of marketing (and has been for 100 years) is again crucial. Which begs the questions:
Can you afford to give something away? How often? And for how long?
Or, perhaps a better question, considering the crushing level of competition on so many of us:
Can you afford not to?
*** Update: Seth just published a post about virtually the same thing (better written though, of course). Here’s my favorite line… taken from slightly later in the post, and is therefore slightly less relevant. But brilliant all the same: “Sure, there’s more junk than ever before, because without a curating filter, the obvious junk gets through. But you know what? In addition to junk, that conservative curator also kept us from seeing and hearing things that today we are amazed and delighted by.”
