Event promotion: Free is the best strategy to attract new customers!

During this year's epidemic, in addition to various weekend flights that are available in seconds, free admission has also become a major measure to boost the growth of the tourism industry. For example, last week Hubei Province announced that all A-level tourist attractions in the province will be open to tourists from all over the country free of charge.

The event will start from August 8th and last until the end of the year, including the National Day Golden Week. Of course, the major premise is safety. Tourists from low-risk areas of the epidemic across the country need to make a reservation with real name, and can enter the scenic area free of charge after taking their temperature and scanning their health code.

As soon as the news of "the scenic spot is free" came out, the public's response was naturally very high, and there was even a grand momentum of "forming a team online and eating hot dry noodles together".

Free is a marketing methodology that takes subsidies to the extreme. It is of great help in both word-of-mouth and topic popularity, and Hubei Province is well aware of this. This situation, on the one hand, has achieved the original intention of "repaying the love and care of the people across the country"; on the other hand, it has also helped to increase consumption and thereby restore the economic development of Hubei Province and achieve the small growth target.

As netizens commented, "You are watching his free tickets, but he is watching your consumption." But why does the word "free" have such great magic that consumers lose their minds almost as soon as they see it?

Because people are naturally "loss averse". Eating more and not moving too much is to avoid "calorie loss"; empiricism is to avoid "brain power loss"; group buying and bargaining is to avoid "money loss"; taking a taxi is to avoid "time loss"; and carpooling and taking an express taxi are of course to minimize "money loss".

Since consumers are not cold traffic numbers in financial statements but real people, they naturally hate losses.

For domestic consumers who have not yet entered the ranks of developed countries and whose per capita disposable annual income is only 15,666 yuan (data from the first half of 2020), money is still the most easily perceived loss. Consumers can be said to "feel the pressure of money as soon as they open their eyes."

Free, with the lowest threshold, breaks people's "loss aversion" psychology to the greatest extent. There's no cost, so you might as well give it a try, right? It’s not a loss anyway. If you think this way, you can leave a message in the comment area~

When it comes to free things, everyone is a "value-sensitive consumer" who is brave enough to try, rather than a "price-sensitive consumer" who hesitates and compares prices.

Of course, free also needs a reason. Because free things for no reason will trigger people’s instinctive risk control mechanism. Chinese consumers, who have been aware of the simple truth that "there is no free lunch in the world" since childhood, still frown when faced with free pie in the sky, thinking "Could it be a trap?"

In addition, humans are rational animals. They must believe in some reason and be driven by some meaning before they will take action. Even if the reason is ridiculous.

An experiment in which people cut in line while trying to copy documents showed that those who cut in line with a reason were much more successful than volunteers who did not give any reason. And the reason is "I have some documents that need to be copied, please let me first, okay?" Excuse me, who is not here to copy documents? ? ?

There is a perfect reason for Hubei Province’s free admission policy - in order to thank the people across the country for their sincere care and love, Hubei will hold the “Travel in Hubei with Love” event. This reason is very heartwarming, unlike the blatant and unacceptable one of “I want to make your money”.

It is no exaggeration to say that a free policy with good reasons is the best strategy for attracting new customers. But if you look at it from a broader perspective, products with the broadest mass base are never free. You may just have paid a "petty tax".

How many common free tricks have you experienced?

The "free" strategy is widely used in the Chinese Internet world. Both 360 and Tencent have achieved business disruption by using the free model. It is probably not an exaggeration to describe this generation of Chinese netizens as “a generation spoiled by free stuff”. Nowadays, there are countless free methods. Here is a rough summary of the routines for everyone~

1. Low-priced loss-making products, e-commerce and food delivery platforms are old players

Have you ever been attracted by Meituan’s “1 Yuan Fried Chicken” advertisement like me? I also downloaded it specifically. It’s just that I didn’t notice that this is a welfare activity for new users.

New users can realize the advertising appeal of eating fried chicken for 1 yuan by receiving consumption coupons and cooperating with store discounts. However, Meituan has made optimizations in the production and sales chain, so even if the event dominates the screen for a long time, it will not cost much money.

The cost of a fried chicken may be no more than 5 yuan, and Meituan’s normal customer acquisition cost is only a few yuan (the customer acquisition cost of a new APP is usually 100-200). Using fried chicken to exchange for new customers, Meituan will not lose money even if it gives it away for free.

In addition, this is fried chicken that is obtained through promotional cooperation with merchants and with the help of red envelope coupons. In addition to eating fried chicken, consumers need to continue consuming if they want to use up the consumption coupons. Meituan launches this activity at almost zero cost.

There are many similar cases, such as fresh-cut mangoes at 0.01 yuan, tempting, right? When you click in to place an order, you will find that it costs 25 yuan for delivery. The only cheap thing in the whole store is probably this mango. In order to get this penny, I racked my brains to scrape together 25 yuan and placed the order with satisfaction. I don't know who took advantage of whom.

2. Free tasting, trial use, and free gifts are the tried and tested methods used by hypermarkets to promote new products

The bread is cut and the yogurt is poured... You're tired from shopping, how about something to eat? How many people couldn't resist the temptation and put things into their shopping carts. Of course, this type of product is often not expensive, and you really won’t suffer a loss or be cheated when buying it.

Otherwise, consumers will simply abandon them at the checkout counter.

Different from the two types of "free products to attract traffic, the essence is still selling things" mentioned above, this type of people pay for their own shipping and recruit people for free is really a case of the real intention is not to sell anything at all, they just want to make money from shipping, or even resell your personal data.

The common way of playing social e-commerce in the past two years is essentially to return the advertising agency fees, channel entry fees, and media placement fees to the people, and subsidize the marketing costs to the users, so that the original third-party acquisition of new users has become the users themselves acquiring new users.

Free is often the most expensive

Old sayings always have their charm. There is really no free lunch in the world.

What seems to be free is often not without cost, and may even be the most expensive. The extra waiting time, favors, and even the so-called image costs that you pay for free may be more valuable than the fifty cents or one yuan you save.

It’s OK to buy 10 kilograms of mangoes for 0 yuan. You only consume the favors and faces of your relatives and friends. You will have to respond to the enthusiasm on Pinduoduo next time.

You should be more careful when you cut the price of iPhone for 0 yuan. You will either give up halfway on the road of attracting 999 new users, or greet the parents of the event designer with regret that “it was just a little bit short”. In the end, it is not you who are taking advantage of the platform, but the platform that has figured out all your social relationships that have nothing to do with you.

When you admit that "free is often the most expensive", you will most likely realize another sentence: when you enjoy free things without paying anything, you are no longer a "person" but a "commodity". I'm afraid this is not difficult to understand.

When you watch free videos without enduring long interstitial ads, you are no longer God, but just traffic that is sold to third parties at a fixed price.

Free users are called users, and paid users are called customers. Free users are usually just one of the props that help paying players to have a good gaming experience. This is the truth of the business world: the essence of transactions is always fair, but everyone’s value targets are different.

Author: New Marketing Insights

Source: New Marketing Insights

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