Your Freebie is Too Expensive
Actual photo of me, full of hope and naivete, patiently waiting for actionable advice from a webinar.
I recently reached out to an old acquaintance of mine to inquire about her work. I knew her years ago when I lived in Denver and I had seen first-hand how she upleveled her life and I was curious about how she did it.
I wanted to ask her a few questions and I was hoping to buy a consult call from her so I could ask them.
Instead, she directed me to her "free training." 😐
Now, we all know why this was a problem, because it wasn't a "training" at all. It was a sales pitch. An hour. Long. Sales pitch.
That I watched because I genuinely trusted her and wanted specific info from her.
So, after about 45 minutes of, "So, are you having this problem?" and, "Let me guess, you've tried all of these solutions?" and, "They haven't worked for you because you didn't know X", and "Let me tell you MY story about how I've done all of this (without actually giving me any actionable advice or information)" well, I was not happy.
Because that "free" webinar was VERY expensive.
It cost me time. Almost an hour. Of valuable time I could have spent on client projects or building my own business.
Instead, I spent it listening to her try to manipulate me into buying from her.
What People “Spend” on Your Freebie
Time
This is perhaps the most valuable currency spent on free offers. Sitting through an hour-long sales pitch disguised as a "free training" can be a significant time investment that could have been spent on almost anything else.
Inconvenience
People also usually need to jump through hoops to access free content, like providing personal information, signing up for newsletters, or navigating your website.
Frustration
There's also an emotional cost - the frustration and disappointment when the "free" offering doesn't deliver the expected value or turns out to be a thinly veiled sales pitch.
Trust
When businesses misrepresent their offerings, they erode consumer trust, which can devastate a small service business.
Now, I'm not implying that she should have sold me a consult call. She can run her business however she wants to, and is obviously under no obligation to serve my needs outside her funnel.
But I was ready to buy from her! I had a few hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket that I would have happily paid to get on the phone with her for even just a half an hour. But her course was $2K.
After she'd already wasted an hour of my time, she’d broken my trust.
There's no way I was ready to make the jump to a $2K course, so she could waste more of my time, and money.
And there's a different lesson we could talk about here: putting steps in your funnel for different needs and price points. But again, she gets to run her biz however she wants, and maybe that wouldn't serve her.
My biggest problem was with the expectation that I'd be willing to watch an hour-long sales pitch and see value in it just because she called it a "training."
Calling a zebra a panda doesn't make it so.
And so here is my question: are we still doing this? Are these tired webinar scripts still working? Haven't people wisened up to the 35 launch emails of the same ilk that give no value, but try to sell us? The social posts that try to stir up our fear and pain or FOMO and manipulate us into buying?
At what point do we say no to all this? At what point do we insist that marketers deliver REAL value to earn our trust? When do we demand that marketers demonstrate their knowledge and expertise through VALUE instead of emotional manipulation?
Real marketing is about providing value.
Solving a problem for your audience is what makes your sales process non-sleazy.
Just wondering if anyone else had enough of this trend, too?
______________________________________
Have we met? I'm Diane Whiddon, a shouty Squarespace website designer and online marketer who's had it up. To. Here. with traditional marketing scripts and free "trainings."
Want some Actual Help with Your Website?
Let’s sit down together and knock out that To Do list.
