As a marketing coach, I get asked that question all the time. In order to answer it for you, we need to split the kind of expert or specialist advice you can offer, into one of the two following categories:
General advice – Which is designed to address common questions or challenges. For example; “Are mail shots as effective as they used to be?”
Specific advice – Which is designed to address someone’s particular situation. For example; “I have a 3 partner law firm and need to attract more local, commercial clients. What should we invest our marketing budget on?”
Giving general advice away for free
This is what I do, here on the blog. In my case, I write about general areas of marketing and business development, which I hope will be of value and interest to as many small to medium-sized business owners as possible. Giving general advice in this way, is known as content marketing. This gives prospective clients a chance to see my approach to marketing and to get to know me a little. It also helps me reach more people with my work, as many of the people who find something they find really useful here, share it with their friends and social networks. It works for my readers and it works for me.
However, before you decide to become a distributor of free information, you need to factor in the cost of writing and delivering it to your marketplace. I spend a huge amount of my time on this blog and have paid out on things like server hire, programmers and designers. The information on sites like this is only free for the reader, not the provider; so consider the time and financial costs before you proceed – BUT DO PROCEED!
I highly recommend offering general advice for free, as a content marketing tool. This blog and it’s Twitter account, has generated the majority of my fee income over the past 12 months and massively increased my name awareness within my target market.
Giving specific advice away for free
This is a lot trickier, because of the enormous amount of risk attached. So, although giving specific advice to people on their unique problems can be a way to generate new clients, you need to be cautious before adopting it as a business development option.
Let’s look at it from a time management perspective. You only have so many hours in a day and it can be enormously time consuming to plough through all the details of someone’s problems, in order to give them the answers and instruction they need.
For example: In a quarter of the time it takes me to give free, specific advice to just 1 person, I can write a blog post, which will be seen by thousands of people that day!
Also, let us not forget those freebie hunters out there, who will never spend a penny on your professional help and simply leech free information from you, posing as a prospective client.
The bottom line
If you run a busy enterprise and you value your time, the best way to market your services via free advice, is to focus on helping as many people as possible; as I do here. Yes, if someone contacts you with a specific problem and you believe that by showing them a little of what you can do, that they will pay you to provide the help they need – do it!
However, we can’t expect the marketplace to place a monetary value on our expertise or time, if we don’t!
What have your experience been, either of offering the kind of global help I provide here or on people looking for freebies from you? Share your experiences with your fellow readers and myself, with a comment.
Photo: Ell Brown
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jim Connolly, Ricardo Bueno, Blog Manana, Ricardo Bueno, kelvin lee and others. kelvin lee said: Do you give too much away for free? Read this! http://bit.ly/aV5Vou [...]
I do two things mainly: 1.) Run a design company, 2.) Speak at and host workshops. For the first, we don’t give too much away for free as I have to pay my designers. I’m happy to help with plugin’s, analytics, etc. But when it comes to design, I can’t do much. On the second, the speaking, I’ve experienced people attempt to take advantage of my generosity and time.
For example, if I’m doing an event for a startup group (say an educational breakfast), I don’t mind hosting a talk. I just ask that my cost of travel be covered. In a few cases in the past, I feel I was taken advantage of. But then again, I didn’t do my part to set a boundary. I do now.
.-= Ricardo Bueno´s last blog ..The Power of Generosity =-.
You make a good point about setting a boundary, Ricardo. It’s all too easy to get so caught up in the moment, that you end up giving until it hurts!
Thanks for the comment.
Excellent points, Jim. I am frequently asked to “take a quick look my social media profile and give me a few tips about how I should improve it.” Well, I’d love to help, but it simply isn’t realistic. This would require much more time than one expects and the result doesn’t benefit the rest of my connections.
I very much appreciate the distinction you’ve made between general and specific advice. It’s always good to be reminded to stay focused on what produces the best overall results.
Hello Irene and thanks for the feedback!
For what it’s worth, I find that the kind of people who ask for that kind of free service from you, are NEVER in a million years going to pay for it.
Excellent advice. Demonstration allows the customer to imagine what it’s like to work with you, which makes it short leap from their mind and into reality.
Thanks Jim!
.-= Tom Wanek´s last blog ..Monday Morning Marketing Quote: Following The Herd =-.
I agree Tom. When one of my readers speaks with me on the phone, they usually say they already “feel” like they know me.
It certainly makes them feel comfortable a lot quicker, than if I was just some guy they Googled.
Thanks for the comment sir!
This is really good advice. I had an enquiry (for paid-for business…) the other day which started by saying ‘I can’t believe how much great free information is on your site!’. Some people have told me there’s ‘too much free stuff’ on my site, but I’m a firm believer that this is how people start to trust me as an ‘expert’. I must bear in mind the distinction though & not answer specific enquiries for free too! Thanks Jim.
Hello Wendy – Thanks for the feedback. I find that general/specific divide to be enormously helpful, when determining where to draw the line. All the best!
As a freelance audio/video producer, I can absolutely see the value in offering a certain amount of “free” stuff. I’ve gotten caught up in the spec debate over and over again… A lot of people in my line of work are pretty vocal about not doing work on spec: “It devalues our work!” they cry. But to me, the video contests and other types of free stuff I’ve done are valuable as marketing content. In many cases, the spec work has led to paid projects, and in every case, the pro bono work I’ve done has made me visible to a much wider audience… Of course, as you mentioned, it’s not exactly “free” when it costs time and effort to create the content… However, there should always be SOME level of return on one’s investment of time…One has to find where lies his or her tipping point between “time well invested” and “giving away the farm…”
I think we all need to set a tipping point as you call it, and then work to abide with it.
Thanks for the feedback Brett.
It’s a fine line and one that people cross regularly. Perhaps it’s a mix of us to blame and them to stop?
I know it’s gotten to the point at times when folks have asked something, I help, then they continue asking anytime they have a similar query.
Although silence usually ensues when I mention, “Sure, I can help, but this is my rate.”
Of course, if we’re offering our time and expertise on anything, it’s up to us to make sure that we draw the guidelines from the start, otherwise we probably would only have ourselves t blame when we keep getting the free “hits”.
Great stuff as always, Mr. C
.-= Danny Brown´s last blog ..Are You a Shadow or a Beacon? =-.
Hello Danny. You’re spot-on regarding setting some kind of guideline, between what’s free and what’s chargeable.
Something I should have added to that post, was that in my experience, when you give too much away for free, you tend to attract people who ONLY want “the freebies”. This can be a costly mistake.
All the best sir and thanks for the feedback, as always!
When trying to figure out where the boundary lies, it can be helpful to notice towards which requests I feel a resentment.
I’ve had the contrary experience on advice, where I set a limit on the amount of free (and specific) advice I was willing to give a particular client group. They felt it was too generous and decided to see if they could find a sponsor to pay my rate. They found one
I have a problem with this myself. Like Danny and you mentioned, if you help people out specifically, they keep coming back for more. I know this happens ALL THE TIME with people on my HH blog, haha.
I definitely agree that you have to start imposing a consultation fee on people coming to you regularly. I think an idea would be something like a “one-shot freebie” policy. Answer one question and then charge for subsequent interactions.
.-= Corey Freeman – Simple Blog Coach´s last blog ..Can Your Blog Be Too Secure? =-.
I provide plenty of general advice through my blog and free articles/reports. Several people have asked me for a free consultation (20-30 minutes) to get a “feel” for my one-on-one sessions. But, this is specific advice and I can’t give away my time too often.
I’m thinking about offering an initial consultation (30 minutes or one hour) at a reduced rate, but no freebies. This will filter out people who won’t ever pay me for my services.
Has anyone else experimented with a discounted initial consultation?
.-= Steve Sponseller´s last blog ..Finding Your Innovation Environment =-.
Hi Jim,
I have a current dilemma on this very subject. I have an educational fitness subscription service & blog for instructors/coaches. I write both free content and the premium content for the members (the latter is very specific – physiology, cueing, coaching info, etc). I try to give only just enough information in the free posts to leave them wanting more. But my partner says I write too much free content and wants me to be “exclusive” to our members. He says I am the “celebrity” and people coming to the site see my free stuff and are satisfied and leave without joining. He says they need to pay for me now.
I totally disagree. I don’t think being exclusive is the answer. If I am not visible in some way, I don’t think we will have as much of a draw. And I can’t tweet or post to facebook links to my premium content as it’s protected – but I can my free content. (Also Google doesn’t search the protected contented so instructors won’t find me or the advice they seek).
Maybe in the past I gave away too much and now attract too much of the “freebies-only” crowd (prior to starting the subscription service I had another blog with tons of free advice), so I need to find that tipping point. But, I need to get my partner to realize being exclusive could be detrimental to our site.
Hi Jim
Interesting post, as always. I’ve been rather too generous with my free advice, such is my nature, and I’m currently going through a process of trying to draw a firmer line between being helpful but still making the client need my services and just handing over all my secrets for free! What I struggle with most is that first meeting with a potential client, which I always do for free – I don’t charge until I know I can be of use – I always struggle to keep my mouth shut and end up giving away lots of specific advice for free. Like I say I’m trying to get better as I have noticed a few more ‘leeches’ hanging around.
Hi Jan. In my experience, the key to a successful initial meeting is to do the asking, not the answering. Find out if you can help, by doing a little fact-finding, then if you can, let them know.
Not only does it fail you, if you “invest” an hour of your time answering their questions for free, it fails them too. Without knowing everything we need about them, their resources, targets etc, our answers could well be wrong. This makes us look less effective and can often lose us what would have been a great client.
Thanks for the comment Jan.
Agreed – I’m getting much better at just listening now, proving most effective
another post I wish I had written….
Great advice as always Jim.
[...] was that when I wrote about the need for small business owners to take professional advice, all the freebie hunters would run away screaming. They would unsubscribe from my blog and newsletter. It was [...]