Moving the Free Line: How Much Information Do You Give Away for Free?

Do you know how much information you should give away for free as a marketing strategy to attract more clients, and how much you should keep for you paid products and programs?

This question came up recently with one of the participants in my program for creating information products. How much is too much to give away?

You've probably heard that you do need to give people a taste of what you do for free in order to generate more leads. Formats such a special report, newsletter, ezine, ecourse, CD, talk, teleclass or video training work well. Some people call it a 'pink spoon' sampler. You might also have heard that you give away the 'why' and the 'what' in your free information, and you save the how-to for your paid programs.

Well, things have changed. There's more free information out there now and more of a need to give a little of your how-to information away. You don't need to give away all the steps to your system of course. But, you do need to give enough so that people could get started with what you give them; enough so that people understand that you really know you're talking about; and enough so that they realize what else you could help them with.

Here's an example.

Several years ago, my free report was entitled "Seven Marketing Mistakes Women Entrepreneurs Make". I told women business owners all the mistakes they were making and I told them why that were a problem. I made sure they knew what all the issues were and why they had to realize this was a challenge for them. Originally, I wasn't very forthcoming with any solutions. I didn't say "Here's one mistake you might be making, and here's what to do about it". I do now of course. I provide several simple solutions in my free information to get people started.

And that's what you need to do too.

You need to provide value in your information that's relevant to the specific challenges your target audience is experiencing. There are two ways to do this. For example, if you have seven steps in your system of working with clients, you could give away a small tip on each one, or you could go into more depth on one specific step.

Naturally, there will be some people who just take your information and run with it and don't contact you again. But, there will be many others who will say, "She really knows what she's talking about and I think she's the best person to mentor me in what she is teaching me here". They will want to hire you to help them implement the information you have given them.

So, don't be afraid to give a few of your best tips away.

More of your ideal prospects will find you that way, and a greater number of them will hire you.