Selling is Dead – Free is the Newest Trend

Twelve years ago, my husband was installing Linux on our computer. I asked him how this could this possibly be free? He told me that the internet was going to make everything free in the future. He was right.

In a world where anything you want to know is just a Google search away, paying for information is a relic of the past. And with it, paid advertising has become increasingly less effective, even obsolete. Just ask any newspaper company.

So if paid advertising is ineffective and too costly, how do you market your product? The answer is simple: offer help to as many people as you can for FREE. By sincerely helping as many people as you can and building relationships, you set yourself above the rest of the players. With a website, you will have the ability to reach and help enough people that eventually customers will come.

You probably don’t believe me. If you offer them help for free, why would they ever pay for your help? Let me give you an example. You need a plumber. You Google search and post a request on Facebook for recommendations from your friends. You find one that has a great website that a friend recommended. The website had a few articles on how to diagnose and fix the problem yourself. They offered a free plumber to chat with you via instant messaging. You quickly trust this company because they look like experts and they are so helpful. You check the company on Yelp. They have good reviews from their customers. After all the free advice they give you, you decide the problem is bigger than you want to do yourself. Who do you hire? You guessed it. Their own website and their connection to social media websites, not paid advertising, is what made the sale.

If you really want your business to attract customers, you need to create your own website that offers high quality content for free. Content that solves problesm, educates, inspires, and entertains. Michael Stelzner in his new book Launch outlines all the steps necessary.

Though your website is free to your reader, it costs money to build it yourself, maintain it, and update it. That cost should be less than what you spend on paid advertisements, however. It also takes time to implement this system. Stelzner estimates 4 months based on his own experience. Some businesses may take longer. Some businesses will have a difficult time writing well enough for their own websites and may have to hire a freelance writer. Implementing this idea takes time, money, and patience.

In a world where we are increasingly blocking, skipping, and tuning out ads, traditional marketing no longer works. We are just too savvy. What we like is being helped and then we tell our friends. We freely market for you. So, invest in your own site.

You can buy your own copy of Launch here.