The best things in life are Freemium.
Beauty is often the result of two great things coming together to make something even better. Our favorite mash-up is Freemium! In this post, we slice this portmanteau open and show you the elements that make Freemium appealing to business owners and end users alike before teaching you how to make it work for your company.
Freemium Information
“Freemium” is a combination of “free” and “premium”, two words you do not typically see together. It describes a business model by which a product or service is provided free of charge, but a premium is charged for advanced features and/or functionality. Though the concept of a free sample is nothing new, this clever term is a relatively fresh one. It first appears in a 2006 blog post by venture capitalist, Fred Wilson. At the time of the article’s publication, adoption of the Freemium model was mostly limited to software companies.
In the years following the publication of Wilson’s post, the number and variety of businesses that employ the model has grown tremendously. Though still adored by the technology industry, (apps with Freemium versions account for 98% of Google’s app store’s revenue), businesses ranging from the New York Times website to United Kingdom supermarket chain, Tesco, have embraced the Freemium model.
Freemium: A Double Word that is a Double Edged Sword
Companies love Freemium because it saves them money on advertising campaigns. In a traditional business plan, a sales team is tasked with educating potential customers about a product or service. Under a Freemium model, users are encouraged to familiarize themselves with a product. However, if poorly executed, Freemium’s cost effectiveness could be short-lived. Freemium backfires when a company’s approach fails to motivate enough users to convert to customers.
Freemium Advice
When done right, the Freemium business model is a win-win for both end users and business owners. The former enjoys a free product or service, and the latter has piqued the interest of a potential new customer. The best Freemium models share two crucial traits:
1.Strike a Good Balance
Businesses that have found success with the Freemium model boast an arsenal of compelling features and services, but offer only a handful of the most attractive ones for free. Determining what users are and are not willing to pay for is a tricky task, made even trickier by little room for experimentation. Users sometimes abandon a company altogether when it decides to place a premium on once free services.
2.Benefits of Upgrading are Clearly Communicated
The “free” part of Freemium is easy to advertise. Free products and services sell themselves. Efficiently marketing the “premium” aspect is a more difficult undertaking. It takes skill to convince someone to spend their hard earned money. The key is to be honest about the superiority of a business’ premium offerings over its free ones from the start.
Allow SLICE to Help!
Excited to put your newfound knowledge to use? Team with SLICE and offer your customers Freemium Internet!
Say you own a coffee shop. People have come to expect their cappuccino with a shot of free WIFI, but this can be expensive to provide. SLICE Freemium WIFI keeps everyone happy. Customers are granted WIFI and you are granted an opportunity to monetize Internet. SLICE Freemium WIFI is easy to manage and highly customizable. Below are 7 WIFI delivery options:
- Feature Limited
- Feature limited WIFI slows bandwidth speeds so that end users can check their email and social media accounts as they sip their lattes. More bandwidth intensive activities like downloading or video streaming requires an upgrade.
- Time Limited
- Allow customers a period of free Internet access. Once the window of time has closed, they will receive a notification explaining that they may enjoy continued usage for a fee.
- Capacity Limited
- Configure your system to place a cap on free data transfers. After the end user has transferred a certain amount of data over the network, an upgrade will be required.
- Seat Limited
- Your coffee shop has a limited number of seats and with SLICE, so can your WIFI. Ensure that tables will be free to encourage new customers to come in by regulating the amount of people that can simultaneously use your shop’s WIFI.
- Customer Class Limited
- While it is safe to assume that most of the people who enter your coffee shop are there to order a latte (pumpkin spice flavored, if they are wearing yoga pants), there are always a few who are only there for the WIFI. Deter squatters and drive business on both ends by integrating SLICE with your POS system to deliver codes that grant WIFI access to paying customers only.
- Effort Limited
- Create an additional revenue stream by requiring customers to watch a video advertisement before permitting them to visit their favorite website.
- Location Limited
- It’s all about location! With SLICE, you can provide free limited WIFI to customers on the first floor of your shop, where they are less likely to linger and at the same time, offer paid WIFI on the second floor, where people typically spend more time.
In addition to all of the above, SLICE Freemium WIFI enables you to collect user activity data to help you plan marketing campaigns. Imagine all of the revenue you will generate!
This concludes the latest installment of “Slice it Up with Alannah”. Keep reading to understand the technological world slice by slice!