Free is wonderful, but it doesn’t work in every situation, especially not when you’re short on cash or worried about your personal finances in the near future. So how can you energise your sales in other ways? We’ve compiled five easily implemented alternatives to free products or services that will charm your customers and help spread the word about your business.

Free Shipping

Who doesn’t love free shipping? It’s a slightly boring way to appeal to your customers, but it always works. There’s something annoying about delivery fees and despite having been in business for years myself, I still can’t point exactly to the reason. Goes to show how we buy with emotions though.

Sell At A Small Discount To All

Shave a bit off the prices for any customer. Remember to do your calculations first or you risk losing money. When deciding on a percentage, the number 10 sounds so small compared to 100, so 30 seems more generous. But that’s a lot! Even 20% off is significant.

Start the math from what you would give up and you’ll view it differently. You need to feel comfortable after the sale, too.

Sell A Heavy Discount To Few

Scarcity is an option if you feel like going bigger. Offer the 5 or 50 first customers (depending what you sell of course) 50% off. It creates shock value and your audience is bound to notice. Once the huge sale is off, you can surprise them by offering a 10% discount to everyone still interested.

Add A Bonus Offering For Free

A bonus could be a free complementary product such as a tie to a shirt or mini e-course to a full-sized e-course. Or you could provide a support session of 30-60 minutes as add-on to a premium e-course.

But what if you’re offering services rather than products? Most of us are familiar with guarantees when buying things like electronics, but could you come up with a clever way to add one to a service? Unexpected usually gets people’s attention.

Restricted Free Due To Necessity

By restricted free we’re thinking of a short campaign to raise awareness, which may help new customers find their way to you in the future. An example is a local juice bar which inventory was about to go bad due to the pandemic. They decided to use it all up by donating to a hospital. Obviously it was primarily about supplies going to waste and reluctance to let it happen, but getting a bit of press isn’t harmful. Good deeds don’t go unnoticed.

Conclusion

You know your business and audience the best, so choose a way that doesn’t feel gross to them. Sometimes completely free is best and in other cases it’s unsuitable to sell anything on discount. One size definitely doesn’t fit all when doing business. What thoughts arise from these examples? Tell us in the comments below!

Photo credit: Henry & Co.