MBA854 Q&A Weekends: Should I give free access to my product to influencers or should I charge them? [REBROADCAST]

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Episode answers the question Should I give influencers or VIPs in my market free access to my products or services? I mean, should you charge them? It's an interesting question because on one hand you know you're worth your money, right? Maybe you should charge them and they should be able to afford it. But maybe also not charging them is a good way for you to get somebody who is a power user to give you great feedback on your product or service. We dive deep in this episode that we first aired about 300 episodes ago, but we want to rebroadcast it for you so you can learn this great lesson. This is definitely something you're going to want to consider if you're selling products or services or courses, something you're going to have to decide on if you want to get social proof from big players in your market. Get all the details in today's Q and A Weekends episode and I'll check you tomorrow with a fresh new one. Hey oh, welcome to the $100 NBA show and today is a Q and A Weekends episode where we answer your question right here on the show. If you have a question you want to ask, just email us at contact Net or you can send me a tweet on Twitter bizrepublic is my handle. BizRepublic. As always, I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. Make sure you check out our free goodies over there@100mba.net. We got a full video course that's free for you on idea validation. We got free guides. We have a great blog for you to dive into, so check it out. Today's question comes from Mandy. And Mandy asks, should I give free access to my product to influencers in my marketplace or should I charge them for it? Hmm, interesting question, Mandy. So Mandy's struggling with this concept where she has a product and this could be a service even. But for the sake of the argument, let's say it's a product because she said product in her question and somebody big in their marketplace, a VIP in the marketplace, whatever marketplace she's in, whether that's the arts, health and wellness business, whatever it is, an influencer in that market is interested in checking out your product. Should she give this person free access or should she charge them just like any other customer? We get into the details of this question. It's a good one because there are different situations where you're going to do different things. So let's get into it, guys. Let's get down to business. So Mandy asks, should she give free access to her product to influencers or big names in her marketplace, or should she charge them? Okay, great, Great question. First of all, it depends on the situation, but luckily there's only a few situations this could actually happen. But let me start with the situations where you would give free access to influencers in your marketplace. Now remember, these are people that have influence over a lot of people that you're looking for. Your target market that might have large, large email lists, a lot of different kind of followers, a huge audience. So if they recommend something, it could really mean that you're going to get a whole bunch of sales you normally wouldn't get. So in these situations, I would give free access, at least for a limited time, you know, for a month or two. If not, you can just give them the product. And that's if they're showing the intention to actively promote your product, whether as an affiliate, where they're going to get a commission for every sale, or they're just looking for a product to talk about on their blog, do a review, or mention it in a podcast, or make it a part of an episode on their video show. These are Just examples. But the point here is that the influencer here is trying to promote you and they're making it clear that, hey, I would like to spread the word about this product. So 100%, I would not hesitate and say, hey, here's free access to my product. Know the ins and outs of it. Because if they know your product very well, they're gonna be able to promote it properly. And also if they're going to be doing videos of it, or talking about it in their blog posts, or doing some screenshots, they're going to need access to it. Now obviously this applies to physical products, this applies to online courses, software, whatever it is. Now there's something you need to keep in mind. If your product for some reason has some sort of high ongoing cost, whether that's web hosting, some sort of production ongoing cost, you may want to tell the influencer, hey, I would love to give you free access to this product, but I only could do it for a limited amount of time because it does cost me money every time you use this product. Now this is a very particular situation and to be quite honest, it's our situation with Webinar Ninja. It's very difficult for me to give complete free access to people with no time limit because it does cost us money to run webinars. There's technology that I have to pay for not only web hosting, but also the web technology, the video technology. Every time they run a webinar with an X amount of attendees, it's going to cost me money. So there's an ongoing cost I'm going to have to pay in order for this person to have free access. And I would recommend, if that's your situation as well, to just clearly state that to the person you're speaking to. Just say there is an ongoing cost for me. So I'm just going to give you free access for a limited time for you to check it out, whether it's a month or two, because I really appreciate the fact that you're supporting me. But after that point, I'm going to have to charge you X amount. It could be a discounted amount. Now what if they're just interested in your product to use it? They just want to use it for their own benefit. Again, whether it's a product, a course, a software, whatever it is. Now in this case, it's up to you, depends on the cost of your product per unit. If your product is a thousand dollar product and you feel like, hey, this is worth me building a relationship with somebody in my marketplace, I want to get to know an influencer, somebody who has a larger audience than I do. Then go ahead and do that. Your products are less than that, $50, $100, then I highly recommend you do that. But what if your product is $10,000? I have a friend of mine that runs a video production agency and his projects start at $10,000. And he served a lot of influencers, big names in our marketplace, big celebrities, household names. And he charges these celebrities full price. He figures if they're coming to him, then he's worth their money. So he charges them just like every other customer. No discount, nothing. And that's a choice he makes. Now obviously this is a different situation because he has a high priced product. He's got products from 10 to 20 to $25,000. And he's attracting the caliber of an Oprah Winfrey. And many people of that caliber feel like if they're not paying for the service, then it's not going to be that good. So he charges them. So you got to look at your situation and also got to look at your business costs. Don't go out of business because the cost of giving your products and services to influencers in your market is costing you too much. You got to evaluate if the cost is not that much to you, then it may be worth you building the relationship with them. Especially if they're looking to talk about your products or service. Now there's another point that needs to be made here. It depends on your product or service. If your product is something that they're going to be using publicly. Like say for example, you have a piece of software. Let's say the software helps people collect email addresses by providing some really cool opt in boxes. They're gonna be using that piece of software pretty publicly. Everybody who visits their website, and that's a lot of people, this person's an influencer in the market, are gonna see, wow, they're using this product. It must be good, it must be legit. And obviously you can use their name and their credentials on your sales page to show that, hey, the best in the game are using my product. So if your product is being used publicly, then you need to give it a different consideration. Cause it has a lot more power versus something like a course. A course is something that you consume and you don't really use publicly. People don't see that you're actually consuming the course. So keep that in mind.

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To wrap up, today's question from Mandy, giving free access to her product to influencers in her market. Should she do it? Should she not? The bottom line is you gotta look at costs. If it's a huge expense on your end, again, think about how much you're spending to give away this product, not how much the product is selling for. Because you could have a product that's $1,000, but you don't have to spend money to actually create it. You created it once and you're just giving access to it like a course. So take a look at the cost. If it's too high of a cost, then offer to give them free access for a limited time so they could check it out and they can see if it's right for them. And then you can charge them later if they want to continue to have it. If the costs are not that high, it may be a great investment in building a relationship with an influencer in your market. Mandy, I hope I answered your question and I hope that helps. Guys. If you have any questions, make sure you email us at contact. We love answering your questions here on Q and A weekends. All right guys, that wraps up today's lesson. Tomorrow is another Q and A weekend episode, don't forget. And on Monday, we have a great guest teacher episode with Kate Erickson from Entrepreneur on Fire. She's going to be teaching you an amazing lesson on creating systems in your business. If you don't know Kay Erickson, she is the systems queen at Entrepreneur on Fire. And what she's going to teach you on Monday is going to be incredibly valuable. Alright guys, before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you have to approach the influencer and say, hey, I'm really sorry but I have to charge you for this because of my costs, don't feel bad about it. Yes, they're important. Yes, they're famous. Maybe, but your business is what matters. You may have people relying on you, even just the people at home that you support, but you may have employees. You don't want to put them at risk of losing their job because you're losing money on your business. Plus, I'm sure they will understand they've been in your spot before. Remember, there are a few steps ahead of you. The important thing is just be honest and straightforward. People appreciate the fact you're transparent. Alright guys, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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