Give without Giving Everything Away

When I first learned about the principle of reciprocity and its application to marketing, I began to give everything away: my products, my time (to do interviews), my ideas, and so on. At first, I saw excellent results. The more people learned about my ideas, presumably the more ready they were to hire me, and I got a decent stream of new clients and referrals. After a certain point, I was working a ton, including evenings and weekends, but I wasn’t earning as much or enjoying my work as much as I should have been. I realized that I was giving too much away and neglecting to build a profitable business.

Do you make this mistake too? It looks something like Figure 10.1.

The problems with giving too much away include:

• “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” People won’t hire you or buy from you if they get everything they need for free.

Figure 10.1 Optimal Amount Given Away

• You don’t have time to create tons of material to give away and provide the best quality service to your clients and have a great quality of life for yourself.

• You can be overexposed. Recall the scarcity law of influence. If your products are everywhere, they can be seen as less scarce and therefore less valuable.

• You undermine your confidence and neglect to charge what you are worth. If you’re used to saying “free,” stating your fee can be a big leap.

So, how do you find that happy medium? It will take some experimenting and getting to know your audience. You’ll begin to see where and how you can best leverage your time. The key is the quality of exposure and focus of the audience. The higher quality the exposure outlet and the more narrow the audience, the better.

If you find that some people with whom you have business relationships are “takers” (they constantly ask you to do things for free for them or their audience), don’t hesitate to ask for what you need. They may not realize that you aren’t getting the benefit that you want or need or may not know how to provide it. Reciprocity can be misunderstood—if you aren’t getting benefits, make your needs known, and if the relationship remains unbalanced, move on to something else.