Yesterday I was in my car listening to the radio when I heard a commercial for life insurance. I’ve probably heard the same commercial 50 times before, but for some reason I actually listened to the words this time. I heard “call now for a no obligation free rate quote.”
What?
Was there ever a time when you had to pay someone to ask how much what they’re selling will cost?
Imagine walking into a store and seeing a shirt you like. There’s no price tag on it, so you bring it up to the counter. You ask the price, but instead, the cashier says “pay me $20 and I’ll tell you how much it costs.”
To me, pricing information doesn’t cost anything. It just doesn’t make any sense. Simply telling me how much you’re selling something for shouldn’t cost me a dime. In all of my experience in market transactions, this has just never happened.
So maybe the “free rate quote” line is just something of a marketing buzz phrase. Perhaps the creators of the radio ad tried two versions of the ad in front of focus groups and found that those who heard “free rate quote” called 5 times more than those that did not. Sure, it’s redundant and unnecessary, but if the line is effective, I understand what you’d add it.
To me, the question isn’t why the advertiser put “free” in an ad for something largely expected to cost nothing. The real question is: what do we expect to be free?
Free On The Web
Looking at the products and services I use on the web there are a few different pricing models:
1. Free– Twitter is the best example here for me. A service that is completely free with no ads and no premium version. It is truly a free and open service that asks nothing of its (U.S.) users.
2. Free but with ads- gmail is a good example of a free service supported by advertising. gmail gives users lots of storage and a great service, and users need only tolerate a few ads.
3. Free at first- Many of the email list management services give users a free trial. After a certain time or use limit, users are required to pay for membership.
4. Freemium- Flickr and Basecamp are my favorite examples of freemium services. Flickr gives everyone a free account, but if you need more storage space or want to add new sets of photos, you’ll need a pro account. Basecamp is a great piece of small project management SaaS, but you’ll need to pay to access premium features.
5. Always Pay- Some of the business intelligence sites are membership-only and make users pay to access their information.
So do the examples scale? If you were launching a twitter competitor tomorrow, would you be forced to offer the service for free based on perceived user expectation? Has twitter’s free service defined the business model for other microblogging platforms simply based on the fact that users associate the service with the model?
And thinking back to that commercial I heard, let me ask you this: If you were tasked with creating a commercial campaign for twitter (or any free web service) would you emphasize the fact that it is free?
