How Many People Like Freebies?

[mscherrah]

When I was in college, one of my marketing professors told me of what he described as the best marketing strategy of all time. All this strategy was, was giving freebies to everyone. Let me explain.

When Tylenol was getting ready to hit the shelves, the people (I don't know which company makes Tylenol, I'm Sorry) went around to all of the hospitals in the country offering their product at no cost. In fact, they offered Tylenol Pain Reliever at no cost for 20 years. Of course, the hospitals jumped all over this, because whatever they sold the pills at, whether it was 20 dollars or 1 dollar, it was ALL profit.

So when anyone goes to the doctor/hospital, what kind of pain reliever do they get? You got it, Tylenol. Now, with doctors telling people to take Tylenol for pain, what do you think people are going to buy from the stores when they run out of the Tylenol the hospital gave them? That's right, more Tylenol!

So the people at Tylenol made a golden decision by giving 20 years of their product away. It was quite a gamble, but as you can see, it paid for itself many, many times over.

This post is to see how many people like to give freebies away with their products, and to share a little tidbit of trivial knowledge. I hope you all like it, and I look forward to hearing what you think of freebies.

Matt

[JamesFrancisIM]

Yep, exactly right. Eban Pagan talks a lot about 'moving the free' line too.

The general rule is to give out something of value (not something that looks as though it's created by a five-year-old kid) and follow up with a paid product through upsells and/or downsells.

However, this line can be pushed so far that you'll actually have less response and less profit due to them believing that your main product will end up being free sometime soon also.

- James.

[reynald2790]

I guess 75% of people really likes to get freebies. Some are more interested in freebies rather than buying it for themselves. Just like in a supermarket.

[artwebster]

While I can understand the logic behind priming centres of influence (doctors) with free drugs in order to popularise them and diminish the generic product but there is a vast difference between giving 5% of the total Tylenol production away and 100% of the value of a unique product to the end users.

To me, if something is free in the way of trade, it isn't worth having because the person who owns it puts no value on it. However, there are very few things that internet marketers give away that are truly free. Most of them require an exchange of value - my product in exchange for your name and email address and the right to send you emails until you decide to withdraw that right.

This is called a transaction. It is not giving something away, it is giving something for a consideration.

It has almost become a science now for myself to look at a new product and wonder how long it will be before someone offers it to me in exchange for an opt in. Remember Slide In Ads? They were hardly off the 'new product' shelf before they were in a give away - I think I got the software about two weeks after the first email promoting them.

Surely nobody thinks that this is rational?

[JohnMcCabe]

Your professor may have had the story right, but he got the message a little off kilter.

Tylenol's strategy wasn't about giving the product to everyone for free. It was about giving the people who heavily influenced buying decisions an incentive to recommend Tylenol over the other alternatives.

If Tylenol didn't work, even that strategy would not have been enough.

As I see it, the real master stroke was the 20 year time span for hospitals getting free Tylenol. That's long enough that ordering Tylenol, rather than some other analgesic, will become institutionalized - no purchasing agent will think about changing to something else because 'that's the way they've always done it.'