So I couldn’t give away thousands of pounds worth of advice!

Turns out it's not that easy to give things away for free. Last week we launched two new services, a SpringBoard and a PopUp Board. Now, I realise you probably have no idea what either of those are but fear not, I’ll get to those shortly. As part of the launch, we thought we’d give a PopUp Board away for free in exchange for filling out a short questionnaire. Wait, for free? Can’t be! What's he selling…. there must be a catch right? Well, that’s what must have been going through people’s minds. As it turns out, it's very hard to give away thousands of pounds worth of advice from industry experts and business leaders. There’s been 3,000 post views so far and less than 10 entries. Go figure!

During this week I’ve thought long and hard about how to approach this and thought it would be a good idea to playback the journey so you can see for yourselves and see what’s involved, if there are any catches and perhaps if somehow I’ll end up with your account number and sort code….

Post 1 – Schoolboy Errors

1942 views, 25 likes, 1 comment…. thanks Dad!

***COMPETITION ALERT - DON'T MISS THIS***

That’s the headline I went with. Perhaps this was the wrong way to kick off. It’s not exactly a competition. Companies aren’t competing against each other, it’s more of an opportunity to win something. Also ‘Don’t miss this’ was a genuine attempt for people to not scroll past but in reality, it probably had the opposite effect. It's an instant sign to carry on scrolling.

How to win? We went with a questionnaire as we want to understand growing companies pain points and challenges. There’s not much to do in terms of brainpower or creativity, simply rate your pain points from 1 to 10. According to the current stats, on average it takes 3 mins 47 seconds to complete.

The second schoolboy error - leaving in the default Typeform picture for the image.

WTF is a PopUp Board?

Perhaps I should have offered a free iPad instead? Worth at over 20 times less but at least it’s more recognisable and people know what they are getting.

In the post I attempted to describe what a PopUp Board entails:

“Do you want a tailor-made board session with 3 SynergyMode advisors, specifically selected to help you solve your biggest business challenges?”

Perhaps that’s a bit of a jargon-filled sentence, so let's break it down.

1. A company brings us a challenge or pain point that they need to solve.
2. After an on-site discovery, we bring 3 experienced advisors selected specifically around the challenge itself
3. We take you offsite and for a half-day session help you solve your problem

Simple right? We provide a short sharp burst of advice from a diverse group experienced industry experts and business leaders.

Post 2 – Andi Peters

965 views, 14 likes, 0 comments

They say accountants aren’t creative….

Stuck figuring out why hardly anyone had filled out the questionnaire, I tried again with a second post and came up with the idea of using a special guest presenter.

Andi Peters is, of course, well-known for Breakfast TV shows like Live & Kicking, GMTV and Good Morning Britain. All he ever seems to do is give away prizes and usually can be found on an exotic beach somewhere.

So the hope was that he would help people see the wood for the trees and perhaps make the value a little clearer. You’re not about to win £150,000 or a holiday in the Caribbean but instead a PopUp Board.

Again no luck…

What stops people clicking the link?

Is it a lack of trust? Is it they just don’t think they’ll win? Don’t tell me its because they’ve got no time. People spend hours scrolling through the endless noise on LinkedIn but what makes you stop and buy a ticket to the raffle, or in our case give under 4 mins of time for a chance to win thousands of pounds worth of advice from industry experts and business leaders.

Here’s a good question. Would I click it myself? If I’m honest I’d probably do the same as everyone else and carry on with my life. I’m not quite sure why that is.

Does it seem too good to be true or are we just naturally conditioned to ignore this kind of approach? Perhaps it's a defence mechanism to protect from being sold to.

Last chance saloon

There have been nearly 3,000 views of the posts and as it stands we have less than 10 entries…..

The competition/giveaway/prize draw or whatever you want to call it closes on 31st December, so you know what to do. Take a chance, go against the norm, spend a little time working ON your business rather than IN it. The likelihood is, at this rate the odds of winning will be pretty decent come closing time.

Nearly forgot to add the link! You can find the questionnaire here.

J