Everywhere you turn on the Internet today, you can get almost anything for free. Free email accounts, free web hosting, you name it, chances are, someone out there is giving it away for free. The Internet has changed our economy from a "retail based economy" into an "attention grabbing economy". The paradigm has shifted from selling retail products to focus on getting the attention of potential customers. Every sale starts with getting your potential customer's attention. Once you get their attention, you can then sell anything you want to them. This article discusses how you can make more money giving your product or service away than you would selling it the "old fashion way" like every body else.
Marketers call the concept of giving products away a "loss leader". This means that you lose money at the beginning of the transaction. In essence, by giving away your product or service, you get to "buy" the customer's attention.
Let's face it folks. People love to get things for free. Free is a very powerful concept. If you get something really cool for free, you'd want to tell your friends about it too. See how the word of mouth advertising factor has dramatically increased? Your friends will also tell their friends as well. Without this free promotion, you would never have the opportunity to deal with all these new customers.
But, how do you make money giving things away?
There are a number of ways to recoup your "loss leader". When you give your products or service away for free, the direct result is an almost immediate increase in your user database. The trick to maximizing revenue is to use a concept called "the life time value of a customer". People used to think of a customer as a one-time transaction. However, to be a true marketing guru, you should look at EACH customer as a total sum of all the transactions they will have with your company, for the life of that customer. For example, if you were selling weight loss supplements, and you gave away the first month's supply (yes, that's expensive). However, if that person then buys from you regularly, say once per month for the next 5 years, then you'd be way ahead of the game. You should understand that not every customer would be converted over as a lifetime customer. The trick is in the numbers.
Another fancy concept marketers use is "cross selling". Once you have your customer's attention, you can cross sell other products and services you have to them. Again, using our example, if the weight loss product truly works for your customer, chances are they will be more inclined to try out other products you have. It is a commonly known fact that people are much more inclined to buy from people they have dealt with and trust than they are with a complete stranger. We're all creatures of habit and we don't have the time to "shop around". By leveraging on this principle, you can further increase your sales by offering other products to these "free" customers.
Once you get your new clients (whom you gave away your product for free), it is critical that you have a centralized client management system to manage the information. These leads are the most valuable assets of your company; don't let it go to waste.
I recently encountered a very powerful system that is designed specifically for this task. Put simply, I am in awe about it. The product is aptly called "Marketer's Choice". You can set it up to automatically send follow up emails to your customers to cross sell them on other products you sell or just to remind them to come back to your site to buy re-supplies.
Marketer's Choice stores all the clients in one centralized database so you can send broadcasts to your userbase for any new product announcements or other cross-promotional offers.
I've seen quite a few marketing tools in my time, but this is the only product that integrates all the great components into one centralized easy to use and AFFORDABLE system. For more information about Marketer's Choice, you should go to:
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/a
By giving away your products for free, you buy access to new customers. In essence, you are buying their attention. To maximize the power of cross selling to that customer, you need a tool that automates the cross selling process. One of the best tools I have seen that does this is Marketer's Choice. 
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