Not everyone who visits a website is ready to make a purchase or join your opportunity. Most of the time, customers and prospects will comparison shop, visiting several times before making a decision. So even for sites that are primarily sales oriented, an equally important purpose of the website is to generate leads.

Everyone loves getting something for free. Giving something away is a great way to generate website traffic and qualified leads.

Creating an ezine or newsletter is a common “freebie”. Subscribers opt in, which means they provide minimal personal information in order to receive the newsletter. Each new subscriber becomes another lead. The result over time is a large mailing list of qualified prospects. In addition to the newsletter, business owners email announcements of new products or services to this custom-made pool of potential buyers.

Many website owners give away “freebies” such as a special report or ebook to increase newsletter sign-ups. This gives visitors to the website an additional incentive to take action, an important step in converting the visit into a future sale. Making the offer time-limited increases urgency and gives prospects a good reason to sign up now, rather than later.

Another benefit of offering “freebies” is the valuable market information it provides. A significant response to an offer suggests the item is a hot topic among qualified buyers. Such data can be useful in driving new product development for the business.

Marketing experts have noted one downside of the free offer, the possibility of attracting people who solely want the “freebie” but are not interested in purchasing anything in the future. One way to decrease the likelihood of this is to make the free offer enticing to those in the market for the products and services offered for sale, but unappealing to others. A direct seller, for example, could offer a free item to anyone who books a sales party that month. By tying in the “freebie” with the desired action, only serious shoppers will respond.

A growing internet trend is to offer visitors a free membership to the website’s online community. Membership entitles the user to access restricted areas of the site, publish a profile, and interact with other members of the community. Usually only a basic amount of information is required to join, such as name and email address.

Industry estimates show that response rates triple when a “freebie” is offered as incentive for prompt action, effectively lowering the business owner’s cost per lead substantially. Even if the free gift increases the total expense of the campaign, the higher volume of qualified leads will result in higher sales volume, thus offsetting the additional expense.

What do you give away?

Combining your free offer with a lead capture page can produce a steady stream of leads. Find out how - click here to grab your copy of Use a Lead Capture Page to Generate Your Own Leads for Your Direct Sales Opportunity.