There is a trend I have noticed emerging from social media for service businesses: we are giving too much information away for free. We lull ourselves into giving away services and expertise that we should be charging for. Before we know it, no one wants to pay for what we have to offer.

Does this sound familiar? You try to gain attention to your business by running a smart campaign where you offer  a sampling of your service for free - maybe it’s a free consultation or download - and the people who take you up on your offer enjoy it, but never come back for the paid service. Why?

Maybe they have gone on to someone similar to you for another free sampling? Maybe they feel they got exactly what they needed from the initial free service.

Maybe people have now come to expect to get something for nothing.

There is psychology involved in this. You have heard the saying “you get what you pay for”? What do you think people perceive they are getting when it is free? I think most of us assume that something that costs more must be worth more – we attribute expertise we may not even know about to the person who is charging higher than the other.   This is a psychological effect called prestige pricing, which points to a strong correlation between perceived product quality and price. The higher the price the more likely customers are to perceive it has higher quality compared to a lower-priced product. According to psychologist Dr. Peter Shallard, “Being expensive cultivates an aura of expert and elite status”… “setting your price is the psychological equivalent of setting the value of YOU. Your life, your work, that thing you’ve poured your energy and soul into.” He recommends you ask customers who don’t want to pay your set value what they are comparing your price to; you and they may find it is not apples to apples. When Shallard first asked this question he found out his life-changing services were being compared to piano lessons!

But with a tough economy people have been forced to settle for less and to become used to it. And maybe we have convinced ourselves we are worth less in the process. So if you are going to offer something for free or discounted, what should you do?

• Always include the numerical value in your offer.

• Always include the time value in your offer - i.e., the actual time the service will take (example: a thirty-minute consultation for $30). According to a study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, marketing time sells better than marketing money because our relationship with time is much more personal than our relationship with money.
  

• Make them pay a little. With even a small “buy in” made on the customer’s part, a psychological commitment is made. There will be a tendency to continue with the service because they are already invested and don’t want to feel they have lost that initial $5.00. This is known as loss aversion - studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.
  

• Make them pay more than a little, but include the original price. According to research by cognitive and mathematical psychologist Amos Tversky and Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who also were the pioneers in proving loss aversion, creating an anchoring bias has a very strong psychological effect (the anchor being the original price in this example). If consumers are unsure about the price they will look around for comparative prices – you provide them with the price to compare with.
  

• Offer coupons. Your potential customers will feel they are getting a deal and you still get paid. Again, include monetary and time values in your offer.
  

• Social media posts that show you are well versed in your field – statistics, what famous people say about it/quotes, questions that get people thinking about their need for your service. Do NOT give away your service in bite-sized portions.
  

If you don't want to believe the psychologists, why not listen to conventional wisdom? This is just one more example of my belief that SEO and Online Marketing rules are like dating ... what is it your mother always told you about why buy the cow and giving away its milk?

The following is an ongoing compiled list:

1. "Always date a girl with a good reputation." When buying a previously owned URL make sure it has a good reputation, as years of cached links may show up on the search engine that you don't recognize.

2. "Be yourself." Google's Panda update is cracking down on content farming.

3. "Why buy the cow, if the milk is free?" Be careful not to give away too much of your service that you should be paid for in your social media marketing.

4. "There's always more fish in the sea." Watch your ROI, if your efforts to get a prospective client's attention on social media are falling on deaf ears ... or blind eyes, move on. Social media can take up a lot of your time and money - a big picture strategy should go hand-in-hand with focus.

5. "Don't move too fast; take your time to get to know each other." A sudden influx of SEO activity can actually hurt your search engine rankings in the long run. Also, being hasty can allow mistakes to go unnoticed. It is more important to take your time to be accurate and strategic where your website's information and links will be placed.

6. "It's not nice to lead people on." Make sure the links that you post with your content on social media or websites go directly to the page with the information you are talking about. You will lose people along the way in a string of links.

7. "If you like it, put a ring on it." When liking an article by a higher profile company or individual, make sure you comment with something compelling that will result in views to come back around to your website or social media page.

8. "Beauty is skin deep." Your website may be attractive and innovative, but if it is filled with shallow content, grammatical errors and is hard to navigate, the viewer will lose interest.

9. "Stay away from Lover's Lane." Don't park your website's URL while you are building your website. Sure, you may make a few bucks, but you have no control of what is going to be linked to your parked domain by the registrar. You may have cached links and content that can harm the brand image you are trying to portray once you go live.
 
Can you think of anymore?

With an estimated 900 million users on facebook world-wide as of May 2012 and over 140 million active users on twitter, you know you need to be generating some social media posts for your small business.
Combined with the fact that it is free to use, how can you ignore this opportunity?

But running a small business is time consuming enough, how do you come up with content for this new source of marketing?  Here are a few tips:

Is there a link in that?
Throughout your day, with everything that you do, be asking yourself, "is there a link in that?"

• Did the person you just meet have a website of their own that you can include in a shout out to them?
  

1. Ex: It was such a pleasure meeting [John Doe], you made me think about [some aspect about John's business]. http://www.johnswebsite.com
   
2. Be sure to like John's facebook page, and follow him on twitter - hopefully he will do the same, and now you are visible to all of John's customers.

• Did the article related to your industry you just read have a link online that you can post and make a comment on your thoughts about it?  No?  does the magazine or newspaper it was in have a website?  Use that one.

1. linking to higher exposure brands, helps your exposure
2. Like and Follow

• Does the segment on TV with the expert related to your field have a link?...or the TV show?

1. Post that link and share your thoughts on the segment on your social media pages.
2. Like and follow the expert, but try not to blatantly advertise your business on their facebook page, tell them what it is you liked about what they said and then include your website link with discretion.

• Is there a page on your website describing a service or product that corresponds to a quirky thought, and idea, tips or fun facts?
• Do you have a blog?  Post the individual link that your website platform generates for each blog post with a catchy description of what the blog is about.  How do you come up with blog posts?  Use many of the tips I shared above, or maybe that is another blog post for me to come up with!

Ask For Feedback
Is there some aspect of your business that you wonder about how the customer experiences it?  Ask.  Don't forget to use #hashtags on twitter.

Plan Ahead
If the prospect of posting social media content every day still seems daunting, you can make it easier by setting aside a time to come up with messages you want posted in one sitting for the whole month.  Services like Hootsuite allow you to link to and schedule future posts for all of your social media.

You may also be relieved to hear according to Chris Luo, the Head of Global SMB Marketing at Facebook, in a webinar I recently attended, it is not necessary to post every day, "at minimum around twice a week is enough."  If you post too much you may start to be ignored or appear impersonal.

Get Help
If this still sounds something you know you need to do for your small business, but you just can't find your way out of what you need to do and do well, then I am here to help!  MC Design & Services, LLC can manage your social media marketing for you, while at the same time working intimately with your business.  Ask about our affordable rates and how you can choose the budget that is right for you.

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and very worthwhile for any small business. She manages our various priorities with great flexibility.” 

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