Promotional giveaways: How to create a Value Add product

Why take your depth of knowledge for granted, when you can turn that information into promotional giveaways that add value to your clients? Here's how to create what can become a powerful marketing tool for your business.

You may not know it, but sitting in your filing cabinet, your head and on your computer is enough information to create plenty of value adding products for your clients. And by offering these promotional giveaways free of charge, you are automatically adding value.

The sticking point most of us have is what kind of promotional giveaway product to create, and how to go about it. Here are some simple ideas to get you started:

Consider your ideal client's problems

Make a list of three common problems facing your ideal clients. For example, if you sell baby products, some common problems might be:

deciding what fabrics are best for what kinds of clothes;
understanding the safety considerations with baby furniture;
deciding what kind of pram is most suitable.

Choose which of these problems you already know the most about. That is, you have information on hand, or have plenty of experience in helping people solve this problem.

Select a format and structure for your promotional giveaway

Here are some ways to present your Value Add Product.

Checklist

A comprehensive list of actions or activities on your topic. People can check off what they already have in place, and can see where they need to keep working

Self assessment

A series of questions with a numeric answer which is added up to give a score at the end. (eg: 1 to 5 scale, where 1 is never and 5 is all the time). Create 3 to 5 scoring ranges and provide an explanation of how they are doing depending on their score.

Free report

Expand on the problem and show people how to overcome it. Provide lots of strategies, tips and case studies if you have them. Be detailed in the implementation section and add value by directing them to various websites for more information. Aim for about three to five pages.

Free e-course

A staged approach to overcoming the specific problem. Decide how many stages your course will be - five is good. Write an email for each stage, and use an autoresponder to automatically send each of your 5 emails.

Free workbook or template

A process that walks the reader through a series of questions and exercises. By the end of the process, they have a means of overcoming the problem.

Free chapter

If you already have a book or report for sale, why not offer the first chapter for free? That way, people get a taste of your work and many will be interested enough to purchase the total product.

An audio interview

Arrange a telephone interview with someone respected in your field, or ask a friend or colleague to interview you. Have the conversation taped and offer the audio as a free download.

Write the content for your promotional giveaway

Obviously this will be based on the structure you have selected. Don't spend days on this. You should already know enough to draft something reasonable in a couple of hours, if not, reconsider the problem you've chosen.

Once you've got the first one under your belt, you can always spend time on another one. What we are aiming for here is a balance of quality and speed to market!

Add the marketing necessities

These include:

Your company name and website address in every page;
Add hyperlinks to your web site throughout the document;
Provide several email hyperlinks throughout the document;
Offer to talk about the content for free with anyone who calls you;
Add an invitation: “Want to know more? Call us on….”

Construct your offer

Here are some examples:

Offer the Value Add product in return for getting their email address and signing up to your newsletter or loyalty program.
Put it in your newsletter and ask your audience for feedback, then compile all the feedback and send out the final version.
Use it as a sweetener, e.g."the first 50 people to sign up for my book will also receive this exclusive report...absolutely free!"

And you're ready to go! Get your promotional giveaway out there, and make sure you monitor your results. Put it up on your website.

Communicate to your customers and let them know it’s there to be downloaded or accessed. Don’t forget to track your results.

Once you’ve got one under your belt, keep the momentum going. Next time, try a different type of promotional giveaway. By continuing to add value to your clients, you’ll be sure to retain their loyalty and their business.

Megan Tough runs Complete Potential, a company that helps businesses solve their strategy and people problems. She loves being a solopreneur, and when she doesn't have her nose to the grindstone, is fulfilling her other passion of fitness and health.

1 comment | Add your own

Hi Megan - so many of us fail to appreciate how much value we actually have to offer and give it away for free, thinking that if we know it, it's probably common knowledge. Your suggestions re: packaging are brilliant (I'm going to take your advice in at least 2 areas). Thanks. (p.s. impressed by your new website, too!). Grant Hyman from Sydney | Read my articles

1 comment | Add your own

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