The Science Behind Specials and Giveaways

Mateusz Wis
Nov 4 · 5 min read
Massive giveaway — huge ROI

How to Create a Massive Engagement on Your Post as a Dentist and Get Huge Amount of Potential Patients Simultaneously?

This is a fantastic strategy for collecting emails, phone numbers, and contact information using simple ads on Instagram, Facebook or Messenger. The best part about it is that you can have it almost ongoing. The bottom line is that we always want to receive something for “free”.

The above post shows you an offer of :

✳️Free Consultation

✳️$695 Dental Implant Special

It is actually a big giveaway but I guarantee that if residents begin to claim the offer your ROI will be huge.

  1. Create a special that will be irresistible

2. Create an ad that will be shown to the residents in your area (within 15–25 miles)

3. Build a landing page you are going to drive the traffic to. Give all the information on how to participate and take advantage of the special. Present the benefits.

4. Run it for a week or two

5. Call those who left the phone number and offer a free consultation OR build an automated email campaign and show what else you are offering.

6. Keep track of the money you have spent and how much you have made ROI

The Strategy Work For Every Business

Is it worth it to run a special or giveaway?

Let’s take a dentist’s ad as an example.

We offer two things:

🦷 FREE Consultation

🦷 $695 Dental Implant Special

The results:

❇️ Over 100 comments (Engagement)

❇️ Over 150 Shares (FREE Marketing)

❇️ Building an email list

❇️ Collecting phone numbers to residents interested in such services

Most likely we will have two options on how the audience will react to it:

☝🏼Wow. Free Consultation and $695 special? I am in. I am looking for a good dentist for the last 3 months. Where can I sign up? ( three minutes later… Why no one is calling me?)

✌🏼Hmm… That is a good option. However, I am not interested at the moment. Well, I think I can still sign up. They ask only for the email. Let’s see what it is all about.

Both options are super beneficial. Why? You can call those who are giving their phone numbers and turn them into paying customers quickly by offering a free consultation (reciprocity). You can build a strong & automated email campaign that will present the rest of your services. You can then educate them and expect to come back soon. Give another reward, perhaps a $50 off for the first teeth whitening. *This Strategy Work For Every Business

Why “FREE” is so successful?

The Science of FREE

The word FREE triggers a response from us that is different from any other transaction we have in the business world. It draws users’ eyes to where we want them to go on a specific page and entices users to move forward.

A free product comes with:

📉Low Expectations (Hey, it’s free)

📊Neutral Preceptions (What’s the worst that could happen)

📈 Positive Impressions (If the product proves to be useful, a neutral perception can become a positive impression for a business)

For example, take 7-Eleven’s Slurpee giveaway. The convenience store chain gave away roughly 4.5 million mini-sized Slurpees, no questions asked. Customers didn’t need a coupon or forced to buy something else in return to get their hands on as many free mini Slurpees as their brains could handle. Sweet, happy birthday to me! Nope. It was actually 7-Eleven who profited from this giveaway. Slurpee sales actually skyrocketed by 38% on that day. Why? Once you take the taste of one, you have to have more. Also, you can discover more products you might need. A giveaway like free Slurpees attracts the masses. People go for the free Slurpee, but also fill up on gas, maybe pick up a gallon of milk and refill on whatever dirty habit they may be running low on. A win-win situation.

The Penny Gap

The Penny Gap

In an experiment from Chris Anderson’s book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, a chocolate kiss and a chocolate truffle were offered. In the experiment, the kiss was offered for a penny and the truffle for 18 cents. The majority of consumers choose the truffle over the kiss. However, when the price of the truffle was changed to a penny and the kiss became free, the opposite happened.

The reason why consumers valued the truffle more, even when the kiss was only a penny, was because chocolate kisses are widely available while chocolate truffles are not; the price for the truffle was deemed a better value. It wasn’t until the chocolate kiss became free that consumers found the real value.

Conclusion

I recommend to test out a few specials and giveaways and see what is going to bring the best results. Offer one special/giveaway at the time. I remember running my first special. It was big! We offered one month of free cleaning (cleaning service company). We had zero results. Perhaps 20 people signed up. Why did we fail? Well, it was the very beginning of our company. Local residents didn’t know us. Our Facebook page had 10 likes. No authority. No existing clients. No reviews. No trust.

Do not make the same mistakes. Build your brand online and use special and giveaways to attract more people. It works. Now, we have at least 300–400 comments or shares on every post presenting a giveaway. Good things take time.


Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade