Mr. Marketing: I love Angry Birds, but ...

Can I increase business by giving stuff away?

Roy Johnson, Poway

Sure, but be balanced about it.

For instance, while waiting for meetings I sometimes play games on my phone. Needing new challenges, I downloaded Star Wars Angry Birds.

This free app appealed to my love of the entire Angry Birds game franchise and my persistent efforts to defeat the Pig King. If you haven’t played, well, it’s complicated.

Playing a round in this game takes about 20 seconds. Yet unlike previous Angry Bird games, this version inserts an advertisement after each round.

Game developer Rovio is understandably trying to convert my interest into a sale. Having called attention to myself, I’m now fair game.

Allowing 10 seconds for each ad to appear and be swatted away, a client’s five minute delay translated to my seeing that ad 10 times.

I’ve always advocated touching prospective customers 7-10 times to complete a sale. Yet an ad every 20 seconds seemed a bit excessive.

“There’s no free lunch,” the saying goes. Free news websites and search engines make their money from advertisers selling stuff.

As the consumer I expect I’ll be “paying” for the free offering with my time, looking at ads or visiting special website landing pages.

And if Rovio only showed me that ad whenever I started playing the game, I wouldn’t complain.

But two ads each minute was obnoxious. I quickly uninstalled the app.

Regardless of what you sell, giving something away for free will help lure in sales prospects.

The word free is still one of the most powerful words in the marketing lexicon, and providing something of interest to your target market — white papers, checklists or games — is sure to attract attention.

And by all means talk about whatever you’re selling. Even with pages offering free stuff your objective remains converting sales prospects into paying customers.

Only I’d urge you to learn a lesson the folks at Rovio obviously missed. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and balance selling efforts with an ability to actually enjoy the free item being offered.

As for me, I’m now happily playing Segmation — a digital paint-by-numbers game that has the added attraction of being an RB-based company.

And yes, I got started for free.

With that said, I wish you a week of profitable marketing.