People in online business can go back and forth about whether or not freebie marketing is a good tactic. It has some advantages; people like free things, but also some disadvantages. That would be that freebie seekers are often not buyers, and therefore nearly worthless in terms of earning an income.

But freebie marketing isn’t just for online marketers. It can be done in the real world. Just think about the free samples you can get wandering a grocery store or Costco on the right days.

And yes, they give away a lot of free products to people who don’t buy that particular product that day.

And then there’s my daughter’s recent karate class. We went to a local street fair (free) and the studio was offering a free month of karate classes plus a free uniform. It was something we’d been considering for our daughter anyhow, the other studios were offering only a single day free, and so my husband and I signed her up.

Really I think they did a brilliant job. My daughter now really wants to continue in karate. She wants to earn a Black Belt someday. Potentially this could get them years of payments from us.

They did a really good sales job by offering those free classes. I very much regret that we can’t take them up on continuing them at the moment. No budget for it. But when things improve, they’re on the list. It’s the first activity my daughter has taken that has made her consider a long term goal with it.

That’s the kind of thing you need with your freebies. You need something that will give your visitors a taste of what they could get by paying. A good freebie makes the customer want your product even more.

This isn’t something that is always easy to achieve. Many paid things don’t translate well to free. If you cut features too much you can lose the power of what you’re offering and decrease interest. But too good a freebie makes people look for ways to keep it free if you go for a full trial version.

How you resolve this depends on what you’re offering. If you’re offering a trial version of something, find a way to balance what you offer for free with what it will take to make people want to pay for more.

If you’re trying to sell something else, offer a freebie that will help them to see why they need it.

Freebies should have a goal of making you money. Just giving something away isn’t going to do you a lot of good. Plan out the path you want your customers to take, from accepting the freebie to buying whatever product or products you’re selling.