Free Stuff: If You Don’t Give it Away You’re Losing Out

We don’t like paying for things. If I could get a car for free and somehow avoid a monthly payment and a painful examination of my wretched credit rating, I’d do it in a second. You would too, although you’re credit is probably better than mine. Salesman and dealership reps could be hiding in the bushes waiting to offer you zero percent, no money down guarantees — no way of knowing. And please don’t tell me. The guys at the liquor store already know me by name.

Free stuff is not a bad thing. In fact, we should probably be giving more away than we already do. If companies want consumers to sample their products, they usually provide ways to get no-cost samples, sling entire packages to consumers in the form of giveaways or staple the new stuff along with popular existing models. We’ve all been to a grocery store, or a Costco, and if you haven’t, you’re probably Amish and aren’t reading this anyway. Point is — there are a ton of people and businesses with their hands out begging you to try their crap for free. What do they want? You to like the product enough to buy it down the road. Like the good man on the corner said, “The first one is free, kid.”

Free Stuff Works

We do giveaways because they work, because they put smiles on peoples’ faces, and (most of all) it gets our name out there. People who would never pick up a product, a book, a raincoat, a gluten free fudge bar, might give it a try if there’s no obligation to buy the whole box. And that, my dear friends, is all the opening a great product needs to work its way into their brain’s “I want it now” center. Positive emotions lead to associations with the items or people that generate them. Simple science. Fantastic advertising.

Crossroads: a Demos City Novel Giveaways

Saw it coming did you? Well played. In the continuing vein of free giveaways, we’ll running a couple of them around here in the coming months. The image you see in this article will be available in altogether unreasonably large poster form, which I’m told I will also sign and number. There will be a few other items as well, from bookmarks to perhaps a signed copy of my bound copy of the original text of the book before its final editing. We’ll see. Stay tuned to the Facebook page and the blog for more.