5 Clever (and Free!) Giveaways that Generate Buku Leads

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone could afford to give away cars and diamond jewelry like Oprah did? While it’s certainly something to strive for, small businesses have to make a single penny work as hard as a corporate dollar does. Let’s face it, most of us are on a shoestring budget, and generating leads is tough. Giveaways work a certain magic when it comes to getting people to give up their info. If your gift is something meaningful and worthwhile, people can’t fill in your online form quick enough, and they’ll share their great find with everyone they know. So, what free items could you possibly give to people that will help you turn them into leads? Here are five, for starters.

1. Promo Codes

Different groups of people are attracted to promo codes versus coupons, so experiment with both. In order for your incentive to be effective, it has to provide instant gratification, so make sure their code or coupon is delivered to their inbox right away. On a side note, it’s always a good idea to email it, and to warn your reader that the code will arrive by email, to ensure that you’re getting accurate data.

2. Trials

If you provide an online service, give potential consumers a chance to try it free. Companies tend to have more luck retaining someone if credit card info is gathered up front for renewal, but this can also reduce the number of people who are willing to sign up. One of the more recent trends is to offer a decent free service, and allow users to upgrade later to access premium features.

3. Video/ Slideshow Training

Online training videos are starting to take off as a marketing effort. You can provide short how-to videos that you film yourself, or simply use a free explainer video program. If video isn’t your kind of thing, slideshow presentations are also easy to make, and are just as useful. Keep in mind that if you’re using this strategy, it works better to teach people about something that relates to your products or services, but does not directly involve them.

4. Guides or Cheat Sheets

Like videos and slideshows, your guides and cheat sheets should be industry-related, but should not directly involve your product or service. Think of an issue people often have that’s related to your niche, and that either hasn’t been covered a lot, or is hot and trending now. Hammer out a couple of pages on how people can tackle the task on their own, but make sure it’s valuable information. After all, your ultimate goal is conversion, so you want to put your best foot forward.

5. Ebooks

Anyone can be a published author these days, including you. Compile several how-to guides, explain the principles of a huge concept, or engage your readers with some other interesting tidbits. It may take considerable time to create an ebook, but it’s probably going to be more valuable to people (and generate more leads), which can be incredibly helpful if you’re in a difficult market.

Sweat equity is required to be able to offer some of these incentives free, but most of them can sit on your website generating leads passively for as long as you wish. There’s no reason to stop at one lead-generation giveaway. Try them all and see which ones work best for your target audience… you know, just until you can give them all cars.