A little while ago my husband insisted that I go into Fry’s Electronics with him so that I could taste some special fudge they were selling there for the holidays. Basically, a fudge company had a table set up and were giving free tastes of their various flavors of fudge so you could decide which box of fudge you wanted to buy as a Christmas present.

This is a very common practice in the food industry that has also translated well into other consumable products. Ever been to a Mary Kay or other cosmetics home party? You were getting a “free taste” of the product line before you purchased it.

Have you gone wine tasting? Have you ever gotten a free sample of a product in the mail or handed to you at the fair? I’ve even received free samples as part of the welcome package in a hotel! These are all the same thing.

Sometimes called pink spoon marketing, free taste marketing is a technique in which you give a prospect a “free taste” of your products or services in order to entice them to buy it.

In online marketing, this technique is employed using the opt-in bonus. Yes, sometimes you can find a free report available without adding yourself to someone’s list, but that method isn’t commonly used.

So, how does this relate to marketing your information products?

Create a related “taste” of your product to help promote it. I’ve done this many times. For example, you can enroll in an e-course that is a free taste of my Plan Your Business Vision workbook and audio program.

In this (and many other) cases, I took a piece of the information that I was selling in the product and created a giveaway product to help promote it.

So, while creating your information product, think about what pieces of it can be used to create a promotional free taste.