The F-Word which sells

Whether the stock is too old, whether the company is too young, whether the marketing department (if there’s one) is lacking ideas, there will always be a quick solution for boosting the sales: the F-Word…

“Free!”

The same boring bribery, half-illusion, half-reality, which still manages to attract the bargain hunters and decrease the stock pressure.

The classic formula of “buy X and get Y for free” (where X = pricey item and Y = redundant, uncompetitive or low priced product), the “free starter kit”, the (really useful sometimes) “free sample”, all of them are doing a pretty good job.

They sell!

Whilst this short-term sales boosting formula is providing some satisfaction to the seller (in terms of cash flow), the buyer (most of the time) is learning an old lesson the hard way: “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”.

Run for offers embedded with free items and you may end up buying an expensive product + free piece of crap which proves itself useless later, free membership in exchange for a mailbox full of SPAM, free starter kit (but only if you bring more muppets to join in), free voucher code (which can only buy you a night cap for your grandma, exactly as they say in Terms and Conditions which you didn’t read), and so on.

“Cash flow is a term that refers to the amount of cash being received and paid by a business during a defined period of time, sometimes tied to a specific project.” (Wikipedia)

The big truth is that most of the companies are relying on the cash flow, because it is directly influencing their ability to pay bills. They establish a forecast for the cash flow and they’re in big trouble if the stock lasts for longer than a certain amount of time. So that is the reason for over 90% of the “free” offers.

Alternatively the “free” bait is the cheap solution for scraping other competitor’s market share or just a “B-Word” (I’ll tell you later what this expression means) with no other purpose than unscrupulous advertising.

Avoid the “F-Word” when buying, avoid being a “low feeder” (this is how some marketers would call the bargain hunters) and try to build your shopping discipline based on more solid factors.

Instead of searching for the “lowest price” and “free stuff” try to search for trusted retailers, who are committed to superior customer services and truly rewarding schemes for loyal buyers.

It will be more satisfactory and more profitable for you in the long run.