How Much Does Your Beauty Salon Business “Freebie”Cost?

Everyone loves free, other than the people who must pay for it. This is the unsaid truth that exists behind any “free” marketing method or campaign. There is normally, though not always, a real cost in terms of time and money.

So when you’re tempted to offer something for free, be sure to count the cost in every way you need to, in order to make sure your free content, bonus gift or other promotional label you chose to give is affordable. It’s time for you to take a close look at the costs you’ll incur along the road to a freebie.

So what “free” promotions are we referring to?

The biggest places we see free work its way into our beauty salon businesses is with the act of gathering email addresses. Offering a freebie is standard operating procedure, and will not be changing anytime soon. In most cases we are offered a free ebook, report, video series, e-course, webinar or email series in return for our email address and other contact information.

What you must know is that there are costs associated with the creation of these freebies. Let’s take a look at several of the actual hard costs you’ll need to deal with in the creation of your freebies.

• Creating the content – Someone must write, film, record whatever content you are producing. Unless that’s totally you, you’ll pay for this.
• Designing the squeeze page or landing page – There are some great softwares out there, but they cost as well. And we know how much designers cost.
• Production costs and shipping – If you need to manufacture a hard product, chances are you’ll have to pay to get it where it’s going.
• Marketing funnel hard costs – Email autoresponders, setup costs for technical aspects, webinar charges. GoToWebinar for instance, charges at the bare minimum $99 a month for their lowest plan, which allows only 100 attendees. (to be fair, there are other lower-priced services)
• Advertising – Are you going to be taking out ads for this freebie in order to attract the widest possible audience?

While it is still a smart idea to use this type of bribe to build a list of email subscribers, you should be aware of what your freebie really costs, and factor that into the cost per lead.