It's happening

Posted 15 years, 7 months ago by Ben Stanton    2 comments

We have now had two draws for free work

and three winners!

 

My blog tonight is going to be brief - mainly because I have nothing really burning to say . . except that I'm tired, I had another down day and that poor me because none of that makes a spot of difference to the fact that this onefreeday idea is starting to catch on. Ahhh, that's better . . . ok, here goes . . .

 

Let me tell you a couple of funny things:

 

1) I have a google adwords campaign running (more about on-line advertising in another blog). The funniest thing is this: the most hit ad has been one that I just put in there for a joke.

Ok, background first: When I was doing my day of work for free for our baby sitter was when the idea dawned on me. I txt my wife something like "How about I give away one free day of work every month, advertise it on our website and see how much work we get?" to which she responded, "Have you lost your mind?"

So I thought I'd put that up as an ad on Google - it reads "Have you lost your mind? That's what my wife said when I told her I would work for free" - and that is the most hit ad. It tells me some things about advertising (be they true or assumed, I'm not sure!)

A) Have some fun, people like fun.

B) The truth might just work!

C) Say something that leaps out and grabs your audience, shakes them around and drags them to your product. - that's what it told me . . perhaps I added a bit too much coffee, but you get the gist.

Ok, funny thing number two - or maybe funny peculiar, not so much "ha ha" funny.

2) I was contacting some landscaping companies in Auckland offering them a potential customer to follow up on. My phone call to one company went like this:

"Hi, I'm Ben calling from onefreeday, how are you"

Mr Landscaper Business Owner as gruff as he can muster: "Good".

Me, keeping up the cherry; "cool, I'm just calling you because we have a landscaping lead that has come in from our website. We are a lead generating websit..",

"Not Interested" he shoots back,

"well, why the heck did you answer your phone?" I thought while saying "Oh, so you're pretty busy then ay?" I queried thinking of how I'd congratulate him on his successful business and wish him all the best when he said how busy he was,

"I wouldn't exactly say that!" He shoots back, now with a tone of annoyed resentment, like it was suddenly me who was to blame for him having no work.

"oh, ok, well that's no good" I offer, thinking I'd try a different way of giving him the work to follow up on; "anyway, we've got this lead that needs some lan . . "

"not interested",

ok, this makes about as much sense as a . . . man, I don't know! Is there an analogy that could describe this level of stupidity? I politely terminated the conversation, hung up and had a good laugh!

But was it really stupidity?

Perhaps he was just sick of sales calls, those vultures (of which, perhaps, I had become one), interrupting his day, trying to scab his last dollar, or maybe he's beyond that, maybe he's now roaming in the land of the cynical and hopeless. Just like some who see "onefreeday = one free day of work, register now and get yours" the first thing that goes through their head is a whining voice that rings "You can't get nothing for nothing" or "there's not such thing as a free lunch"

Ok, Ok, I'm not writing this to convince you about onefreeday and how it all works - If you are this far already you probably have a pretty good idea how much of a pretty good idea it is.

It's funny though (peculiar, not ha ha), that now ALL my advertising revolves around breaking through to the cynical mind. People struggle to accept something for nothing, struggle to believe that there isn't some sort of catch to it all.

Now, I'm not insulting the cautious. No, if your life has any kind of access to the great world of the virtual then you would be wise to be cautious, even dare I say it, cynical.

Be cynical about what e-junk-mail comes your way, about all the virtual viruses that seem to cause more damage to our wellbeing than a real one.

Yes, be cautious about those scammers who setup fake banking sites and rob thousands of accounts, and be very cynical of that special letter that you and only you are the last remaining relative of some prince from ancient persia and they need your bank account details to pass one hundred trillion dollars through before midnight or the whole country will starve to death and look at this photo of this little boy, his family haven't seen his pet snail for weeks and you have to pass this message on and on just incase his snail is on the internet. If you do then you will win ten jumbo jets worth of diamonds for every 25 people you pass this message onto and your PC will suddenly make you a cup of genuine java coffee all the way from spain, (believe me, this really worked for me!) [how did they know it worked for them before they sent you this message?] and if you don't send it on your toes will rot through your shoes and your email will crash and burn and you will never ever have the chance to save a snail again - ever - in your whole life -

 

ever.

ok, enough! It's late - I must go to bed!

 

So my parting question is this, How do we break through into the cynical, cautious mind of real people? How do we convince them at a glance (which is all you have in advertising) that what we have to offer is genuinley great and beneficial to them?

 

Your comments would be appreciated.

 

Truley!

 

Thanks,

 

Ben


it's a "double win situation"

Posted 15 years, 8 months ago by Ben Stanton    0 comments

I must admit how amusing I find it reading through user instructions that have been written in Swahili and translated into pigeon English by a Tibetan hermit.

A few months back I was talking (via email) with a rep from a chinese electronics manufacturer.

My Chinese friend was telling me that their service was "the second of no-one" and it really was a "double win situation" for me to be dealing with their company.

I love that: "double win"!

My great revelation from this (it came while I was still chuckling to myself) was that I was actually really interested.

- I now wanted to know how dealing how this Chinese manufacturer could possibly offer me, a small New Zealand company, a truly winning deal, while at the same time benefitting their massive business in such a way that they would want to continue doing business with me.

. . I never did find this out.

But what it showed me was that offering a genuine "double win situation" is the key to successful business relationships.

That's what I am excited about with onefreeday.co.nz

win: A genuine opportunity for people who want work done to get it done for free (their downside is that they may not actually win the draw and that they might be offered a free quote, some downside!)

win: Another genuine opportunity for a business who might be a bit quiet (or not) to give one day of one of their staff away for free in exchange for a new (and happy) customer AND then the opportunity to offer free quotes to lots of prospective customers.

oh and a third win: Give to charity. A free day can go to charity, or just give a donation.

It's all about the numbers, the more people signing up for onefreeday of work, the more businesses that can get involved and grow and the more the charities will benefit too.

Cool ay?


The beginning

Posted 15 years, 8 months ago by Ben Stanton    2 comments

Well, it has begun . . .

I have just spent two weeks building the onefreeday website so I thought I could spare a sec or two writing a blog.

 

So - what's this onefreeday all about?

onefreeday was born out of the need to generate some fast, hot sales leads for my small electrical business.

Work had all but dried up.

It was as simple as this: Give away one free day of work each month, just give it away, and watch the customers line up.

Then it dawned on me: why not let people register on a website for genuine free electrical work and pick one winner and contact the rest to offer a free quote or with a "great deal".

As the concept grew, (over the course of 2-3 hours) I talked about it with some other business owners and they said they wanted to be a part of it too

So onefreeday.co.nz was established/started.

The idea just keeps growing too - for example, this is the perfect platform for small businesses to support charity. So we are now getting charities involved. Every one in ten of the free days that the businesses give will go to support a charity, or they can just donate the money.

Now I just have to balance the number of public registering with the businesses wanting to come on board.

 


Shim