TOP 3 WAYS TO MAKE THE FREEMIUM MODEL WORK FOR YOU

Modern shoppers are bombarded with advertisements. In our highly connected, digital age, there is no end in sight to the range of products, services, and brands that a consumer can purchase from and support. But with so many ads and brands competing for consumer’s limited attention and discretionary income, how can a company find new consumers, and get them hooked on their products or services? Finding qualified leads isn’t enough. You need to find a way to compel those leads to make a purchase. What’s one of the quickest ways to do that? The freemium model, and we’ll cover the top three ways the freemium model can work for your business.

With profit margins getting tighter in many industries, the freemium model does have a few downsides. But for subscription-based service models, going freemium can be an excellent way to build your brand awareness, convert leads to sales, and increase your profits.

1. The freemium model cuts through the noise.

The average consumer sees 5,000 product ads a day. Offering a compelling freemium service for a trial period is a quick and easy way to cut through the noise and the competition online. But to make this work for your business, you need to offer an obvious value to the customer with your freemium versus paid subscription model.  

Spotify does a great job here. They offer a freemium, but users have to listen to commercials for one thing, and they can’t download songs to a multitude of devices with Spotify freemium. Upgrading to the paid option though gives them the ability to skip songs, skip commercials, and download their playlists to any mobile device.

What you need to do is offer the customer an obvious value when they upgrade to make freemium work for you. When the customer sees how valuable your service is with freemium, but how much better it can be with the upgrade, the chances of them converting to a paid customer are much higher.

2. Nurture the freemium leads.

In most cases, it takes consumers a while to decide to make a purchase, and most leads are not ready to buy straight away. That’s why nurturing your freemium leads is crucial to getting this model to work for your business. Think about your sales funnel, and creating lead nurturing email campaigns to expose the leads to your brand and compel them to make a purchase.

3. Hold back on core functions.

You don’t want to give away too much, too soon with the freemium model if you want it to lead to future sales. While the freemium model can work if you’re strategic about it, not every freemium subscriber is going to convert. Your freemium people still have value as potential brand advocates. The trick here is not to give away for free too many of your company’s core functions. Doing so will cause the freemium model to eat into your profit margins, and it won’t work.

The freemium model isn’t dead, and subscription-based companies can make it work for them if they keep these three tips in mind when creating a freemium model as part of their marketing campaigns.

WHY GREAT CREATIVE REQUIRES A HUMAN TOUCH

In a post GDPR world, brands, agencies, and publishers are starting to take advantage of data-driven technology. While an ad's visibility is a crucial element of effective marketing, it’s not the holy grail that many businesses think it is. With the abundance of easily accessible data on their hands, brands and digital marketers have gotten away from creating engaging ads. In essence, they’ve forgotten about the importance of resonating with their viewers.

In today’s world, consumers are becoming savvier to marketing techniques and crave creative ads that resonate with them on a human level. Data and visibility don’t speak to your customers. If you want to differentiate yourself from the competition, your ad campaigns need to include an engaging, creative element. .

To what extent does visibility matter? 

An ads visibility only matters if the person seeing it is a qualified target. If you sell winter clothing, you don’t want your ad displaying to people who live on the equator. But, if you get your ad in front of a targeted member of your ideal audience, if the ad doesn’t have an engaging, creative element, it will fall flat.  

So, visibility is only one element of your campaign’s effectiveness, but many brands will make the mistake of thinking that visibility is the only means to an end. The right people can see your ad, but if those people don’t find the ad engaging, the campaign has failed. The ad’s reach isn’t enough to drive the campaign's effectiveness. You must provide a creative element that encourages the viewer to interact with the ad and take the desired action.

How can you increase the creative element of an ad campaign?

The most effective and engaging ads have the brand’s objective at their core. For an ad to reach maximum effectiveness, you need in-depth knowledge of your target audience to get the ad to resonate with them. If the goal with your ad is to drive sales, that needs to be the focus of your campaign. Don’t do both. 

While technology is becoming more accessible and sophisticated, brands don’t want to make the mistake of pigeonholing their ad into the latest digital trend because everyone else is doing it. Data is crucial to ensuring that your target market is reached. And ad technology enables it to be delivered as quickly and accurately as possible. But to drive engagement, your ad needs to be creative. It requires a human touch. 

To sum it up…

The advertising spectrum is complex. While it’s true that no single element should take precedence, the business’s objective and the creative must be the focus of the campaign to ensure maximum success. The world we live in is becoming increasingly isolating and commercialized. Consumers crave branding and advertising that is creative and resonates with their desires and pain-points. Visibility can’t do this. Collaboration with the goal of delivering a creative ad will.

Will AI Ever Be Capable of Creativity?

The robots are coming. They’re coming for your jobs. But fortunately, not all of your jobs. While it’s true that automation is taking over specific tasks at a terrifying pace, there is a glass ceiling for AI, and no, they can’t break it.

So, what jobs are safe from the massive influx of robot workers?  Creative jobs that require empathy. In fact, it’s safe to say that AI will never be capable of creativity. Creativity requires a soul, which a machine will never have.

Can AI corner the creative market?

No. But, and this is the good news; AI will make creative types more productive. How so? Take a look at programs like Grammarly and Scrivener. These programs have helped millions of writers plan, plot, and edit their work.

Recently, Google’s AI division developed a machine that was programmed to learn from its opponent. The machine could run more possible chess board scenarios than there are atoms in the universe. Pretty impressive. The machine played a best-of-five round of chess against world champion Lee Sedol. Sedol won the first round. But, the machine quickly learned and bested him in the remaining four games.

While a robot can measure ingredients for a cake. A robot cannot create a new recipe that tastes good. A robot cannot build something, paint something, or otherwise create art. Art resonates from the soul. Anything that involves memorization or diagnostics is ripe picking for the robot workforce. But if the task requires empathy to do well and right, it’s out of their purview. For example, a robot could take over a surgeon’s job. It can’t take over a nurse’s. A robot can vacuum your carpet. It can’t pick out and design an interior that’s cozy and pleasing to you.

While AI may be faster than people and can retain and cross-reference facts better than a human, it only operates in binary form. The situation for AI is either win or lose. It is either right or wrong. Black or white. AI cannot discern shades of grey. Human beings, as creative creatures, operate in a constant state of shifting perspectives and emotions. Creative pursuits, which most jobs are, require you to see things through multiple, empathic lenses. It comes down to passion and emotion. And humans engage with each other on an emotional level that AI will never be able to duplicate.

So good luck to us (and them). My money is on us! (But if we're gambling then the robots will likely be able to figure out the mathematical chances of that better. ;)