Read this article and I'll give you 109 Killer Reports on Internet marketing! Yes 109 FREE bonus reports just for reading this article!Does that sound familiar?
Internet marketers have gone 'free mad'. Freebies have their rightful place in
online marketing bag of tricks: 'subscribe to my Ezine and I'll give you a free eBook' and 'order this and I'll give you a bonus product' are often used to great effect. However, many Internet marketers seem to have 'lost
plot.'
If you have a sensibly priced product with a money-back guarantee, do you really need to pack in 10 'bonus products' to sell it?
I nearly added another eBook to my library last week. My cursor was hovering on
'Order Now' button but I decided not to click. Guess what put me off? Too expensive? No,
price was fine. Not enough freebies? No. There were too MANY freebies and by
time I got to reading about how 'Bonus #9' would change my life, I'd lost interest in
eBook I was about to buy. My state of mind had shifted from enthusiastic to suspicious.
The perceived value of
eBook I was about to buy got lower as more and more bonus products were added to
deal.
Imagine an offline retailer, who normally sells a chocolate bar for 50 cents, with a special offer: '3 bars for
price of 2.' Or a travel agent with an offer on a vacation: 'book today and get 20% discount.' The offline marketing world is full of deals and offers - because they work. And of course, they work online too.
But what would you think if
retailer had said: 'buy this chocolate bar today for 50 cents and I'll give you 5 bonus products: a cigarette, some gum, 2 paper clips, last month's free ads newspaper and a comb'? You'd think he was out of his mind - all you wanted was a chocolate bar.
On
Internet - at least at
home-based entrepreneur end of
market - an unwritten law seems to have crept in which says that to get
sale you need to bundle in lots of free products.