By Timothy Ward / Published on December 31th, 2007 / Marketing
that one of the most eye catching words in advertising
is the word FREE. So whenever possible we've been
encouraged to use the word free in our advertisements.
However, what can you do if the product or service
your advertising isn't free, and you don't have anything
free to give away? How can you incorporate the word free
into your advertisement then?
There are of course, hundreds of websites that will sell
you little knick-knacks and trinkets to give away to your
potential customers. But these can be expensive,
especially for internet marketers with tight budgets.
There is however something that you can give away for FREE
that won't hurt your budget, and may help your business.
The one thing you can always offer for free is information.
And a great way to offer information is in a free report.
Now you may be asking yourself: What information do
I have that other people would want to read about? Well,
look at it this way, who knows more about the product or
service that you are advertising than you? So if you
are going to offer a free report why not make it about
the product you are selling or the service you are
offering. Or it can be about something closely related
to your product or service.
For example if I wanted to offer a free report in ads
for my travel website (http://www.Bookyourfares.com),
my free report might be about 'The Secrets of Booking
Airline Flights Online'. Since I own a travel website,
I would be in a good position to know at least a couple
of tricks that might interest people who were looking to
use the internet to book flights. And of course I would
be sure to include links to Bookyourfares.com throughout
the free report. That way if people found my report
informative they probably use Bookyourfares.com to book
their airline flights (and hopefully their hotel and car
rental reservations as well). That's how a free report
can help your business, it may draw sales from people
who ordinarily may have passed over your ad. But since
you offered a free report, your ad caught their eye and
now you have their attention. And once you have their
attention, hopefully the quality of your product or
service can take it from there.
One of the best ways to set up a free report is with
an autoresponder. You can set up autoresponders free
of charge at http://www.sendfree.com. There are other
free autoresponder services; a search on Google yields
at least 5 others. If you set up your free report on
an autoresponder, then all someone has to do is send
an email to the autoresponder responder email address
that you will be given when you finish setup and your
free report will be sent directly to their inbox. This
allows them to read it at the convenience. For example if
you send an email to: mailto:onlinefriendship@sendfree.com,
you will receive an article I wrote entitled 'The Power
of Online Friendship'.
You can also have the free report on a seperate page
on your website, or you cam have it downloadable
from your website. No matter how you do it,
giving away a free report is a great way to grab people's
attention, and increase your sales.
Timothy Ward is an author and ezine publisher.
For more information on his latest ezine the
Free Promotion Tips Ezine visit:
http://www.linkcounter.com/go.php?linkid=210240