Online social media is probably the most exciting new thing to hit marketing since the invention of television. With minimal cost, it is now possible to communicate anything to millions of people all over the globe instantly with no editors, no purchasing of ad time and no pesky programming to get in the way of the message. It is a marketer’s dream. With only a few keystrokes, anyone can be reached right now. Unfortunately, getting anyone to pay attention is a bit more difficult than posting something on a web site. Just because you can publish something doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone will read it…and if they do read it, there’s a good chance they won’t buy your product or service.

Getting others to listen isn’t easy. Converting interested listeners to buyers is even more difficult. Both tasks, however, lie at the very heart of marketing. More than describing features, more than demonstrating benefits, more than communicating a coherent value proposition, marketing has to make sure that the right customers and prospects hang on every word spoken – and then buy something. The best advertising, publicity or brochures doesn’t win the sale but getting a prospect to listen, to care and to act does. Any media, when handled well, can accomplish those goals, but since there are so few awards, little money and no television series featuring the romantic exploits of bloggers, social media should force marketers to focus on drawing in customers more than ever before. But few are pulling it off yet.

Whether it’s Facebook profiles for Proctor and Gamble brands, regular articles from Deloitte or videos from Jones Lang LaSalle, companies are producing a prodigious amount of content, and are developing networks that regularly watch, listen, read and comment. By definition, those networks are paying close attention, but what does it add up to besides good “buzz”? If customers listen to you, if they talk with and about you, if they prefer you, does that translate into sales?

Marketer, social media expert and author Jeff Molander likes to ask that question a lot. As he put it in a recent blog entry, “Social media leadership means creating demand not preference. CEO's should be pressing marketers to put sales and leads before tweets and friends... period. It's a marketer's job to create measurable demand not memorable ads...nor preference.” So how do we do that?

In recent articles, I’ve referred to the network that engages with your social media as a great and hungry Beast, needing constant stimulation, constant care, and constant insight. (see Feed the Beast: The Social Media Marketer’s Challenge, The Beast of Difference: Getting the Network to Pay Attention, Face the Beast and Let the Beast Cry),) but converting the Beast’s engagement into actual sales can be tricky. The Beast wants content on the Internet to be free, and tends to become angry when asked for money. If it’s angry, it stops paying attention.

During the first Hackers Conference in 1984, Stewart Brand famously told Steve Wozniak that, “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.” The idea that “information wants to be free” has become a central tenant of Internet practice. It has also been, as Brand predicted, a central tension of the Internet. How can someone make money on something that is free? No matter how many people read your stuff on line, if it’s free, it isn’t building your business.

If one cannot charge the Beast for content, how can any money be made?

Consider addicting the Beast.

One of the more effective marketing strategies, on-line or off, is that of addiction. If someone needs something, they will go to any lengths to obtain and ultimately pay for it. A fantastic, if unfortunate, example of this strategy at work is the illegal narcotics trade. A classic approach for a dealer of heroin is to offer someone a free dose or two. Once they’ve tried it and begin to desire the altered state provided by that narcotic, perhaps even physically require it, they are willing to pay any price to get more doses.

In more “legal” industries, free samples are regularly offered to create addiction. Before regulations prohibited them from doing so, tobacco companies handed out free packs of new cigarette brands to anyone who wanted them. Food manufactures regularly offer free samples of potato chips, cookies, and even breakfast cereal.

Is the Internet just a place to give away free stuff or can it be used to distribute “free samples”?

I would argue that content on the Internet is no more free than the samples of guacamole dip offered at my local grocery store. If I want more than a couple of bites, I have to buy it. However, if the guacamole isn’t very good, and if I am not that interested in having another bite – the fault may not lie in the strategy of offering free samples, but rather in the quality of the guacamole itself. The free sample has to be compelling; it has to promise something more in the future, it has to make me want more…it has to be addictive.

Granted, even if it is addictive, quite a few people may have enough discipline to take the free guacamole but avoid buying the tub just as millions of people will watch an advertisement but never buy the product featured in that ad. Fortunately, unlike an ad on television, or free samples in a grocery store or addictive narcotics from a drug dealer, Internet-delivered free samples are very cheap and infinitely scalable – even to a million people at a time.

And just like the best guacamole, any “free sample” content on the Internet needs to surprise and delight the reader. There should be questions placed in the readers’ minds that can be answered only if further contact is made. There needs to be a clear promise that even more valuable information, assistance and products are available.

What should you feed the Beast? Free samples. How can those free samples be monetized? Make the samples addictive. It also might be a good idea to offer tortilla chips for sale with the guacamole.

Are your free samples addictive?  Do you know of any good examples of addictive free samples offered by legitimate companies?  Write me and let me know what you think.