Moving The FREE Line in Internet Marketing

The sales funnel is an important part of any business. It is a map of how you get people into relationship with you so that you can build trust and a long term commitment to each others success. The customer tells you what it needs and wants and you provide solutions to their problems through different product offerings in your sales funnel.

How you market your offerings is the strategy you use to attract prospects into your sales funnel. You want your prospects to take action to start the relationship with you and your business. As mentioned above, with the onslaught of free access to information and services on the internet, business today has to have a high value offering that they are prepared to give away for free on the front end. The free line is the line in the funnel that divides the free offering from the paid products Research shows that the more you can give away for free that your competitors are charging for, the more sales you will make in the back end. By offering huge value up front, the trust relationship between the client and the business deepens. This is what is called moving the free line.

It is called a sales funnel as the marketing strategies and product offerings are laid out in a manner that visually resembles a funnel. The top of the funnel is where the more general product or service will appeal to a lot more people. That is where you would add your free offer. People will enter the funnel and hopefully come back for more of your stuff as they start to rely on and trust what you can do for them. Once they are in your funnel it will be easier for you to interact with them building a relationship and converting more of them into paying customers. The further along the funnel people move, the more specialized higher end products you will be able to offer them as they will be very receptive to what you can do to help them out.

Internet marketing and social media marketing have given birth to a whole new industry of creators. As our speed of connection increases and tools become less expensive to create and purchase there are continual changes in the online space. Think about it...15 years ago we were paying exorbitant prices for long distance. Mobile phones were carried in a tool box. Video cameras were huge. Today we can have a cell phone that fits in our pocket that doubles as a laptop and takes video and photos and uploads them onto the web within minutes.

With communication being shared so rapidly and accessibility to it growing exponentially there is huge room for growth to meet the demand. Being connected online today is not only for adults and business, kids are getting connected too. Programs are starting to show up at in colleges teaching about blogs and personal branding in preparation for the work force.

Early adopters of these tools are now training traditional businesses and solopreneurs to get themselves online. They quickly learned that the power of the internet today was in developing up to date, accessible, high quality information for people. Content is king and info products are a huge industry. For those that want the most up to date info to keep abreast the rapid changes in their industry they are willing to pay top dollar from the leaders who they trust and can count on to deliver the best value.

The internet has given the power back to the consumer. With a click of the mouse they can find the next bigger better faster competitor. To remain competitive, marketers are offering what was previously a front-end product for FREE. The free line is moving further down the funnel. Customers are expecting it.

In the offline world, T. Harv Eker of Peak Potentials Training did it first and best. He built his list and wrote a book which he sold to his list to make it hit the NYT Best Sellers List. In that book he offered a 3 day intensive training seminar for free. He didn't have to find his target market to fill the room. They found him when they purchased his book. His company is one of the fastest growing personal development companies today and all be creating a community of dedicated fans by offering high value high end training that his competitors were charging for.

Online marketers like Social Spin who offer social media marketing solutions with training and tools to online marketers are giving away Free Customized WordPress Blogs with complete blog setup, social profiles already added and SEO ready as their FREE offering to attract customers into their funnel. This can usually cost anywhere between $500 and $1000. Since the blog is the hub of your online marketing efforts it is a huge relief to have someone do it for you. This offer certainly looks like a game changer. Having the right tools worked out makes it easier for you to be successful with any new learning. Personally I think it will be interesting to see if this doesn't go viral. Social Spin is "moving the FREE Line With Social Media Marketing Tools"