MBA914 Does Giving Out Free Swag Work?

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Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast for those who want a better business today. That's why we deliver our 10 minute business lessons every single day, five days a week. 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. If you have a new idea for a business or a new feature or a new product in your business and you want to make sure that your potential customers will buy it, then you need to check out our free Idea Validation course. It's a seven part video course with a workbook to help you make sure that you nail those ideas and make sure you have things that people actually want. It's an essential skill you need as an entrepreneur and this course is completely free. Just go to 100 MBA net in today's episode you will learn does giving out free T shirts and stickers and water bottles and all that kind of stuff will work as a marketing exercise. Is it worth your money to buy these things and give them out at a conference, a meetup or even at your physical store? Well that's what we're going to be covering in today's episode. Nicole and I have attended many conferences. We sponsored a few conferences one recently in the Past. And I want to just share with you our experiment of giving out free swag. It's going to kind of be like a debrief to find out was it worth it, and if it was, how would I do things differently to improve my conversions? You might be surprised with what we learned. I want to make sure you're spending your money wisely when it comes to marketing your business. That's why this episode is so important. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Last September, Nicole and I sponsored an event called Heroic Public Speaking. It's a large conference in the public speaking world. And part of sponsoring that event is having a booth there where you can sell your product. In our case, it was our webinar software, Webinar Ninja, which is a great match for public speakers. At this event, we went all out when it comes to giving away swag, giving away free gifts to promote our business and our brand. Yes, we sold our product there as well. We gave a special offer, but we also gave away free gifts. We even had an arcade basketball game set up at the conference where people can win these gifts. We gave away stickers and T shirts and earbuds and water bottles and bags like tote bags, all with our webinar Ninja branding on it. Now, we spent thousands of dollars on these products, let alone the price of shipping it and bringing it to the event. And we're not obviously counting any of the expenses of actually being a sponsor and having a booth. Today we're just gonna focus on the value of giving away free gifts for promotion. Now, before we decided on these gifts, we actually really thought long and hard about what gifts can we give that are actually useful, that actually people will use. Now, I've been an attendee or a speaker at many conferences and seen a lot of free swag given out by sponsors. That really was junk to me. I really didn't even pick it up from the table. Or even if it was in my bag, I would never take it home with me just because it was useless. Most people don't need another USB stick or another stress ball. So we wanted to make sure that the gifts that we did give out were useful. People would use them and would be on top of mind when they used it. We also wanted to choose gifts that they would use in front of other people out in public. That's why we chose things like a T shirt or even a water bottle. When you go to the gym, you have your water bottle with you or earbuds. Cause you're gonna go out and about, you're commuting, you're wearing earbuds. And all these products would have branding on them. So therefore, we'd get a little bit more exposure to the public. Now, it's important to know that not all of these products are created equal, or I should say priced equally. Just. Just to pull back the curtain a little bit. To give you an idea, the T shirts were the most expensive item. This is especially because we chose high quality T shirts. Even though we bought hundreds of T shirts, it cost us around $23 a T shirt with shipping and everything included. And that's because we went really high end with the T shirt because I wanted people to wear the T shirt. There's nothing worse than having a T shirt or you got a T shirt for free and it looks horrible, doesn't fit you right. It doesn't feel right after you wash it once. Our webinar Ninja T shirts, I wear them every day pretty much because they're so comfortable, they fit me right, and they're high quality. So you might think, wow, earbuds or a water bottle might be more expensive. They're not. They're actually a whole lot less expensive, maybe a third of the price. So in order for us to try to evaluate if these marketing materials are actually working, we have to have some sort of matrix, some sort of criteria. And the criteria that we can really use is dollar value versus exposure, meaning how much did I have to spend to get them to use that free gift? So, for example, If I gave 10 people a T shirt the next day, how many of them are wearing that T shirt? Now, it's kind of hard to know if they'll ever wear that T shirt, but that's kind of a good gauge to see if they actually wear it. Another gauge is if I gave out a sticker, how many stickers would I see on laptops or on notebooks during the conference? And it gives me a rough idea that how willing people are to use that product and to, you know, give our brand exposure. Now, the surprising stat that we found out was that the stickers actually performed the best. Now, part of that has to do with our logo. Our webinar Ninja logo is actually quite interesting. A lot of people commented how they love the logo, and our sticker was just our icon, our logo icon, which is this little Ninja character. It's almost like an origami ninja. But the point here is that we would give away these stickers and we would see them immediately put it on their laptop or on their notebook. And I would see them all over the conference. And a high quality sticker doesn't cost much. Costs like $0.05 when you buy in bulk. So that was a huge surprise. The other thing that we discovered is that everybody loves a good T shirt. So when people played our arcade basketball game and they would win some points and we'd ask them, which prize would you want? We'd give them options. Would you like a T shirt? Would you like earbuds? Would you like a water bottle? Would you like a tote bag? 80% of the people wanted a T shirt. And that was a huge surprise to us because we didn't have a lot of different sizes. We had extra large, large, and medium. We didn't have small. We didn't have double xl. A lot of people wanted double XL or we ran out of Excel and they wanted more xl. So if I had to do it again, I'd probably get more larger sizes. But really, people want a good T shirt. And we displayed the T shirt on our display banner and they saw the quality and they really liked it. So even though I didn't see that many people wear the T shirt the next day, I. I did get the sense that they were getting a high quality gift. They felt like, wow, I'm getting a really good thing for free from these people. There's some sort of goodwill and there's some sort of good feelings connected to our brand. Now, another thing I want to say is you also have to evaluate how else would you market, how else would you spend this money? And a good comparison would be like a Facebook ad. If I wanted to get a lead or somebody to learn about webinar Ninja, how much would that cost me on Facebook? And for us, we spend around $5 per lead on Facebook ads. 5 to $6, depending on audience we're targeting. But this is completely cold traffic. Now, I wouldn't equate a $5 or $6 lead on Facebook to somebody who I actually met in person, who I had a conversation with, who asked me questions about the software, who has a webinar Ninja T shirt or some sort of swag. I'm top of mind. I have a deeper connection with this person. It's not super deep, but it's definitely not somebody who has no idea who I am. Like a cold Facebook lead. So essentially, you could say if you spend $6 on a Facebook lead and you spend $6 on some sort of swag and you give it to them and you have some sort of, you know, rapport conversation it's worth it. But again, T shirts were really expensive because we want high quality. So we're talking about four times as much cost as a Facebook lead. So really hard to compare the two. But definitely I would say the stickers were a great investment. The T shirts were really well liked. Probably the water bottles wouldn't do it. Again, people liked them, but not really very forgetful. The tote bags, people actually liked the tote bags because they had a lot of papers or they wanted to hold their laptop in their bag. So it was a convenience thing. But I'm not sure how much they would love it or use it outside of the conference. And we didn't give away that many tote bags, so it made me think that people were really not interested in that kind of gift. So let me extract some learnings from our experience. Number one, I would definitely do this again, giveaway swag. And I would definitely do T shirts. And I would do stickers. Again, I'd give stickers away for free, but I'd probably value the T shirts a little higher. I wouldn't just give them for free. I'd probably give it to them for free. If they sign up for a free trial, that way I get an email address and I get them to use the software and give us a try. And if we can impress them with our experience as a customer, they'd hang on and become a monthly member or an annual member, depending on what they signed up for at that point. Giving away a high quality T shirt, spending 22, 23, 24, $26 on a T shirt, definitely worth it. Another thing that really helped us at our booth is we had a lot of different visuals, we had a huge banner, we had a lot of different kind of whiteboard signs where people can understand what's happening at this booth. We're giving away free stuff. We're giving away free T shirts, we're giving away free stickers. A lot of people are afraid to approach a booth because maybe they don't want to have a conversation, maybe they don't want to be sold to. So from afar they can know, oh, they're giving away something for free here. I should go and approach them and ask them for it, right? So that really helped. And a lot of sponsors at conferences don't do this. They just have a table and they put their T shirts or whatever on the table and they'll give them away when they approach them. But if they don't, they don't. So the signs, the whiteboards, those things that show that you're giving away free stuff really helped. And you know, the attraction of having that arcade basketball game was really cool too, because it brought people over to, you know, let out some steam and enjoy some, you know, some hoops to win some prizes. Now, there's one critical element I want to talk to you about when it comes to giving away swag, and it has to do with your audience, fit with your brand. Now, I'm going to go into detail when it comes to generally talking about this on Friday's episode where I talk about should you sponsor an event.

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Choosing the right gifts for your audience is really important and even the way you present the gifts. So one of the things that caught us a little bit off guard with Heroic public speaking was the demographic was a little older than previous years. This is our third year being a part of Hero Public speaking. Great event. Michael and Amy Port do a fantastic job. Absolute magic on stage. But their demographic has gotten a little older. And that's because probably they're getting people that are more and more serious about being great public speakers. And with a different generation, you're going to need to be able to adjust to that. So our basketball game was a lot of fun, and some of the younger people were involved in that, but some of the older people were not really into it. They didn't really feel like doing it. So I'd probably say 50% of the crowd really wasn't into playing basketball for a free gift. Now, if I went to a different type of conference that attracted a younger crowd, maybe a crowd of between 20 and 30, maybe that would be a better idea at a conference like that. Having known that in the future, I probably would not do that. If I were to sponsor HeroBook speaking again, I'd probably just make It a free gift without any kind of game involved. Plus, our gifts were pretty universal, which is great. Anybody at any age can enjoy a T shirt, a sticker, a water bottle, a bag. So I was really happy that we were able to cover all those bases. And I don't want to generalize here, but it's something to keep in mind the demographic of the crowd, make sure that your gifts match them. Of course there's going to be exceptions, but you got to take a look at the general statistics and see are you actually adding more value or less value by giving these types of gifts to this audience. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it. If I had to do it all over again, yes, I would be giving out free swag. But just like I mentioned, I'd probably add in some sort of thing like sign up for a newsletter or a free trial for the T shirt because it's quite expensive and I want to kind of get as much value from that as much as possible. And when it comes to stickers, give them away as much as possible because low cost item. People love them and they, you know, they use them, they put them on their stuff, their laptops, their notebooks and it gives you a great way to show off your good looking logo. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Remember, guys, that every Friday we do free ride. Friday we give away a free ride to one of our courses. This Friday we're giving away a lifetime membership to easy course, which is a course on how to build an online course, a 30 day course. It's worth $500. But we're giving it away for free to a random person who leaves us an itunes rating and review. Leave us an itunes rating and review and you can win a free ride to easy course. That's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. It's scary to buy thousands of dollars of gifts, really, and to give them away hoping that you're going to get an roi. This is why it's really important to evaluate the first time you do this and see what really worked, what didn't, what can you cut costs on, what can you double down on. And that's kind of what we did with our events. And this is what I'm doing with you right now. I'm actually opening up my debriefing session with you on the episode. So if you're just new at this, if you don't have a lot of money to spend say, for example, you have $500 to spend on free swag. No problem. We had a lot of leftovers. We overestimated how many we give away. So that's going to be okay because they're not perishable. I can give them away in the next event. But the point here is that you make sure you go small. You have 500 bucks. Get some gifts that are in that budget. If you run out, that's a good problem to have. You can get more the next event. All right, that's it for me today, guys. Tune in for tomorrow's episode where it's Q and A Wednesday. I answer the question, how do I make my course more interesting? This is somebody who wrote in who has an online course that they're going to sell, but they want to make it more interesting. I answer that question in tomorrow's episode. So hit subscribe and I'll check you then take care. Of Foreign.

Knows Anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.