“What advice you can offer for my 31 yr old musician/artist son who is designing a very artsy website that hopefully will flourish into a great enterprise for film/video/music/store. He thinks he should give his first album away for free!! He is trying to generate a following but . . is this the way to do his small business marketing.” – Bettye

Giving content and items away for free is a great way to generate interest and demonstrate your expertise whether you’re a musician or a consultant. The more you giveaway for free, the more people will buy. Of course you don’t want to give away your primary source of income, the product or services that bring in the revenue. If you give everything away for free, no one will buy anything.

So how much should you, or in this case your son, give away for free to promote his new business?

I like Amazon.com’s marketing strategy. Let people listen to 30 seconds or so of a song, for free from their site, just enough to make you want to hear the whole song. In your son’s case giving away 1-2 songs for someone who is unknown and getting them circulating is a good idea, giving away his whole album is probably a mistake.

Want some more ideas on how to build trust and build your business? Read this article on to improve your small business marketing
- Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing That Works