The Pitfalls and Fallacies of Attracting People With "Free Stuff!"
I'll be the first to admit that it's really cool to get something for free.
And I'm sure you are aware that lots of marketers — from supermarkets to people issuing new crypto tokens — use the "get something FREE!" angle to attract people. That said, it's an approach that often can cause more harm than good to a person's or company's plans to drive business.
Damselfly by the water
The good thing about offering free stuff is that it gets lots of people excited enough to get off their butts and take action.
The bad thing — or at least one of them — is that people tend to "value" things they get about as much as they had to pay (or however much EFFORT was expended) for it. So if they spent nothing, they value that thing at nothing.
Consider this simple exercise: How many "free" offers have you gotten — online and off — that you enthusiastically claimed, and then promptly forgot all about?
The other "problem" is that you tend to — as an advertiser/marketer/seller — get exactly what you ask for.
Spring garden view
Let's look at something very simple, and on topic, in the context of this crypto-token based community: When someone offers an "airdrop" of new tokens... how many "freebie seekers" will they get? And how many of those "freebie seekers" are actually likely to become actual INVESTORS?
Very few, I'd be willing to bet!
When Mrs. Denmarkguy — who offers spiritual coaching and counseling — largely did away with doing pro-bono work and giving free sessions to friends and family, her business actually improved considerably!
What's more, her clients started paying a lot more attention to the advice they were receiving, ending a good bit of frustration.
Evening sun and silhouettes
Another problem with free stuff is that when you focus is on drawing people in by offering free stuff, you tend to attract a large group of people who are looking to score some free stuff.
Most likely, these people are not actually your clients or customers!
I may have shared this story before, but many moons ago I was dating an ad sales rep for a radio station, and they were in charge of doing a "launch party" for an upscale outdoors and camping goods
business.
Well, they were going to give away 100 pretty nice tents for FREE to the first 100 customers responding to the radio ad on their opening day. It was a zoo! LOADS of people showed up to get their free tents... and then they left.
Problem? These people were in the market for "free stuff," not in the market for upmarket camping goods.
So what's my point here?
Mountains and canyons near Sedona, AZ
The crypto world seems very fond of creating situations where developers and founders give away lots of their new tokens ("airdrops") and then act all surprised when the project tanks and few people actually want to buy their tokens. Personally? I'm not surprised, at all... there are millions of people around this planet whose primary objective is to scour the web for any and all things that involve companies or individuals giving away free stuff!
But they sure as hell aren't the "investors" people are hoping to attract... these folks will be trying to sell your token next week, so they can use the proceeds for pizza and money for the laundrymat!
There's little doubt that promising people "free stuff" is very effective if all you are trying to do is attract a large number of people... and nothing else. But a lot of marketing campaigns are short sighted, and fail to look beyond... and consider what those people who show up to collect their free goodies actually care about.
Thanks for reading!
(Another #creativecoin creative non-fiction post)
Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.)
Created at 20200112 00:57 PST
1164
In agreement with you, nothing in life is free. Not sure where people thought they would get money for nothing.
Being online doing mining, hitting faucets or any other token that comes along, it is never free. Time, electricity, effort all equal money.
Buy into good projects and help build a future, chasing free is not so free if you really take more into consideration.
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/4 - need recharge?)
Indeed, nothing is ever entirely "free," anyway... people seeking "free stuff" tend to have a huge blind spot in terms of how they value their time.
With a few exceptions, quality tends to persevere far more than "gimmicks."
What brings to my mind the remarkable successful story of the shareware software industry of the past century.
Shareware is an interesting beast in the sense that it tends to be smaller scale and often open-source... and it's pretty common for creator/developers to ask for "donations." It also brings to mind paywalls where you can use this for free three times a day and beyond that you have to buy the "premium edition."
Which is different from freeware which is often riddled with bugs, stolen code, trojans and other annoyances nobody wants to deal with.
The human animal is a curious creature and 'value' and 'worth' seem to be such intricate and layered beliefs that people might not even realize the various triggers to what is considered 'valued' or 'expendable'.
I definitely think that less CAN be more in various cases and it's always a struggle when we live in a world of 'the side hustle'. We all of us out here in this digital realm have MANY options to draw people to us to get a few pennies here and there, but how many way and how many 'venues' is good for us, business, and our soul?
Thanks for your thoughtful comment @donnadavisart!
I am actually in the process of addressing precisely what you are talking about here, in the sense that I am increasingly aware that I have become involved in so many different things over the past 20 years (online and off) that it has become overwhelming to simply keep track of them, let alone do anything effective. So I am taking stock and cutting a lot of things loose from my life as being "expendable' because whereas they are "kinda cool," they none-the-less don't add much to my world, and yet they take time to manage, and they cause stress as I am aware of their presence, but also my own lacking time to deal with them.
Not good for my soul, to be sure!
I think the trouble is that people undervalue what they got for free, since that's what they paid for it... nothing. So when they utilize it or try to sell it, it's nowhere near it's real value and they end up devaluing the product/token/service.
For something to have true value, it has to serve a useful purpose, have increasing demand for it and be costly. When people are willing to spend their resources on something, it sends a signal to people that it's valuable.
Bitcoin is ridiculously expensive, but what is it's utility over any other (much better) cryptos? Perception! People are willing to pay 100's USD for a fraction of this stuff and we've watched it go up and down. People buy based on an unknown future assuming it will moon again. Scarcity and novelty and an speculated future are all bitcoin has going for it.
I am a "SUCKA" for the freebies.... LoL
I even fuel every day or 3, at the Pilot TS's even tho I absolutely hate them. They give Me 10 points per gallon. Others only a point per gallon. This equals $10 on the hundred gallon. And a top off on my current truck from empty is nearly 200 gl.
Many Pilots not all have different restaurants that accept these points. Can You say Free Food?
