Why Your Social Media Marketing
Campaign Should Offer Something for Free
Social media platforms have rapidly become one of the pillars of many marketing campaigns. The incredible reach, targeting options, and accessibility make the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even YouTube great platforms to strategize for with just about any project.
With over half of the world’s population having an account, and the average use being over two hours, per Smart Insights, every marketing campaign wants to utilize social media. However, with so many ads and campaigns running on these platforms now, it takes a lot of marketing savvy to create a successful campaign.
Here, we’re looking into one of the most powerful drivers of clicks, positive brand recognition, and customer retention – free samples and services – and some examples of how they’ve proven successful.
Why Risk Giving Away Products and Services for Free?
Naturally, with competition being so high online, you don’t want to risk losing money by giving away your products or services for free – nor do you want to devalue your brand by doing so. Still, research has proven that offering something of value and use to customers for free can be very beneficial to your brand.
It’s a classic marketing strategy for a reason, with it playing into the rule of reciprocity. A simple yet powerful part of our social conditioning, reciprocity kicks in whenever we receive something of use for free, causing us to want to return the favor or reciprocate in some way. At the very least in business, achieving goodwill reciprocity always enhances trust, as demonstrated in the Journal of Business Research.
This increase in trust in the brand and customer confidence can be invaluable, and it all comes from offering an easy, free way to experience the product or service. As has long been seen by confectionary brands, this trust and prompt to engage with certain products results in a high conversion rate of as much as 30 percent.
People Are Inclined to Explore Freebies
Simply having the words “free” as the emphasis of a marketing campaign immediately makes the ad, post, product, or service more desirable. Even if people don’t particularly need what you’re offering at the moment, they’re far more likely to explore the offering as it isn’t at any financial risk to them. From there, if they take up the free offer, they’re far more inclined to stick with the brand and then buy into the premium offering.
Leading online brands recognize the power of offering even very valuable parts of their business for free. Take Trussle, for example, which offers a mortgage in principle that accurately calculates how much money you can lend for a mortgage for free and without a hard credit check. A MIP offers very valuable information to a prospective home buyer, and their one can be printed and trusted to be correct as it draws from 18 lenders.
A great example of putting such a free offer onto a social media platform comes from AirAsia. Their Facebook ads were bright, static, but economically utilized the words “free” and “limited time” to enhance the draw further. So, the ad space itself doesn’t need to be particularly dazzling or animated; it just needs to clearly showcase the valuable free asset that you’re giving away to maximize its reach.
If you can find a part of your offering that is valuable to customers and will subsequently earn their trust, it’s well worth making it the centerpiece of your social media marketing campaign.
