Forum Moderators: buckworks
I feel that soon I will need to drop one of my 2 "freebie" marketing tactics due to the expense and time involved.
However, both have worked out great for growing my customer base.
Here is what I do:
1. I offer free fragrance samples and a coupon for anyone signing up for an account. This offer is regular posted on different "freebie" forums and the like and I have gained thousands of potential customers using this method. However, it is costly and time-consuming to put the packages together (mailing labels, postage, samples, etc.)
2. I also have a monthly prize drawing for my newsletter subscribers. This is great because now I have a person that has opted in to receive my newsletter in which I post current coupon codes, special offers, etc. This method doesn't really cost that much and doesn't really involve that much time.
And the dilemma: Most people would not find my site were it not for the "free sample" giveaway promotion. So less people would also be signing up for the newsletter.
If I drop the monthly drawings, I fear that many people would opt-out of the newsletter subscription and I wouldn't be able to promote special sales, etc. to them.
Of course, many people just sign up for the free sample and never opt-in to the newsletter and never order a thing.
Given that, what would you keep? The free giveaway that allows you to reach thousands of potential customers, or the monthly drawing that allows you to keep promoting to current customers?
Of course, if you can come up with a better solution, please let me know!
Assign value$ to your labor, samples, etc. then figure out how much you're spending on campaign A in say, a month's time. Divide that by the number of sales you made in that same timeframe. That's your cost of acquisition for a sale in Campaign A.
Do the same for campaign B.
Whichever one is costing you less to make a sale is where you should be putting you marketing dollars. It's a math question, not a "preference" issue.
