The #1 Small Business Marketing Tip for Outrageous Profits

How can I generate more leads, more sales and make more money?

That’s the one marketing tip I hear struggling entrepreneurs and small business owners asking for. Do you know the answer?

The answer is simple. Give your prospects a chance to test out your expertise, your products and your services. This is the fastest way to demonstrate the value you offer and to develop the trust you need from a prospect to make a sale.

Say you’re in the market for a new car (lucky you, in this economic climate!). You walk into a car showroom – in my case it’d be the Audi dealer’s – and what do you want to do before you make any decision to buy?

You want to take at least one car out for a test drive, see how it handles, check out the leather seats to see how comfortable they are and even test the GPS, and the other bells and whistles.

Now imagine that when you walked into the showroom, the sales associate told you you couldn’t touch the car, get in it or take it for a test drive; all you could do was look at it.

What would you do? You’d leave and go find a dealer that had their head screwed on right. It’s hard to imagine a salesperson that wouldn’t let you test out a product or service.

Yet that’s what most business owners do: they try to sell their products and services without giving prospects a free test.

Too often business owners worry so much about their profits they they lose sight of the face that profits come when their prospects experience the benefits of their product or service. Big mistake!

In fact, the more you give away to prospects the more money you’ll make in return.

Now I’m not talking about giving away your products. I’m talking about giving your prospects a taste of your knowledge or your services so they can get to know you and trust you.

For example, you’re getting this newsletter because I gave you a free ebook. And it wasn’t something I just threw together; it represents some of my best ideas. This simple giving strategy has prompted over 40,000 people to add their names to my mailing list.

You may use an initial free offer simply to build your database of prospects like I do, but at some point you’re going to want to prompt your prospects to buy. What kind of offer will motivate people to buy?

Again, give away something for free or for practically free:

* Oreck successfully sold one of it’s vacuums by offering it free for the first 30 days along witha $130 iron as a gift.

* Time magazine’s online offer is: “Subscribe to TIME! Plus, get 6 months more for 1 cent!”

* Cingular offers “Free Camera Phones” when you sign up for a 2 year agreement. Other phone services “give away” free minutes when you sign up.

* Send people a check. AT&T mailed out 200 million checks to former customers and 10 million became clients again. By cashing the check, prospects agreed to sign on with AT&T.

* A local Stamford, Connecticut investment adviser gave away a free workshop and grew their assets by $20 million.

* Google gives away its top quality search services in order to attract viewers for the unobtrusive ad space they sell.

* Charles Schwab gives away access to its select list of mutual funds.

* As a skier, this is one of my favorite offers; Andes Tower, a small ski area in Kensington, Minnesota, started a free after-school program three evenings a week that included transportation to the hill, equipment and lift tickets for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. In other words, they gave away everything and then some. The benefit? Their ski shop immediately sold out of every piece of junior equipment (for 7th-12th
graders).

The long term benefit is that they’re grooming a generation of kids who love skiing. They’ll be back with their parents to buy more gear as they grow. And who knows? Down the road they may be back with children of their own.

Want to supercharge your small business marketing and your profits?

The more you give away in terms of perceived value, the more money you’ll make.

Give something away that your prospects need. Give away ideas your prospects can use and help them understand when and how to use your products and services. It’s the best-kept secret to success.

This year I gave away more free ebooks than every before. The result? 2008 has been my most
successful ever.

Give to Get! That’s the core marketing tip. Put it into practice and you’ll see your profits soar, too.

What is your Give to Get strategy?

-Charlie