Insights from a Strategic Marketer: Are You Robbing Your Customers?

A topic that comes up a lot amongst business owners is: how much to give away for free? 

It’s a particular problem for those who don’t have a tangible product – you can’t touch or see or eat strategic marketing advice, for example.

So, quite rightly, marketing wisdom is that you have to give people a little ‘taste’ of what you know and what you can do. This ‘taste’ is like the morsels given out by food companies – enough to make you decide if you like what is on offer. 

It’s when we start giving too much away that the problem starts. That’s when you might accidentally be robbing your customers.

I realised a few years ago that I was doing this. Part of building up my businesses and my reputation has always been one to one sessions with people.

You know how it goes – you go to an event or networking, you arrange a one-to-one to build a better understanding of each other.

Inevitably, to show people what I can do, I take their business as an example and walk them through some strategic marketing points. That’s fine. And expected.

However, sometimes, I was letting the one-hour coffee chat become longer and become a consultation. That was when I realised it: I was robbing my clients by letting this happen.

How? It’s simple: my clients pay me very good money for my advice and time. I was sat there, accidentally, giving away for free what they pay me for. It felt morally wrong. How could I look my paying clients in the eye and say that what they had paid for, I was dishing out over a coffee?

Time and again though, I see business owners do the same thing: give away too much for free in the hope of making a sale or enhancing their reputation. In effect, what they are doing is devaluing what they have – and totally doing their clients a disservice.

Imagine you’d paid £50 for a main course at a restaurant – then the next day saw the Chef give a similar meal to someone for free because they wanted to know what the Chef could do.

How would you feel? I’d feel annoyed, angry, and like I’d been fleeced – if it’s on offer for free, why am I paying for it?

So, when you feel tempted or pressured to give away too much of your time, knowledge, experience or products for free, think how your paying customers would feel about you doing that. If you know you’re doing them a disservice, then stop.

Learn lines to say (“This is a great conversation. If you want to find out more about how I work with people, let me know.”) and move on. Don’t be accidentally robbing your customers.