After checking into our hotel in Nashville for the NYWC (National Youth Workers Convention where we were exhibitors for our product "Clover"), I hopped in the elevator to cruise up to my room. The elevator hit floor #2, and as the doors opened I was engulfed in a sea of youth pastors. Apparently they were heading from floor 2 to floor 4 (which I thought was rather odd), and my floor was 5… Which gave me about 9 seconds to have a meaningful conversation with them.

One of the youth guys asked me if I was there for the YS conference… I told him I was, and that I was one of the exhibitors down in the exhibit hall. He asked who I was with, and I (proudly) mentioned Clover.

His next comment is what got to me a little bit. He asked, “What are you guys giving away?”

Although caught off guard by his annoying comment, I answered back, “We’re handing out inspiration.”

I was pretty pleased with my answer, but I was still a little frustrated with the interaction. Maybe it’s the nature of these conferences that have the tendency to make me question if it’s the best way to spread the word about your product.

There’s something that happens at these places that’s kind of reminiscent of a carnival… at least the portion of the carnival that your walk through super fast so that the carnies don’t make you feel ridiculous for not playing their “toss a nickel on a plate and win an over-sized doll” game that you will never actually win.

If you replace the “over-sized doll” with “free stuff exhibitors give away”, you have a typical exhibition. Unfortunately, a lot of times the product is the same as it is at the carnival- pretty much good for nothing.

In preparing for attending our first round of conferences a few months ago, we had a bunch of conversations about whether or not we were going to give away anything in order to get people to our booth. Conferences really made us think through our marketing approach. After hours of conversations, here’s what we determined:

“Free” always costs something. Always. Whether it’s handing out a crappy pen at a conference, or a 10% discount for every person named “Jerry”. The cost for the company is not necessarily the amount of money they lose giving the discount or buying the product they are giving away- what they really lose is the respect of their product.

Right out of high school, I went on a missions trip for 3 months on the Logos 2, a ship that sailed around distributing Christian books, Bibles, and educational curriculum to 3rd world countries (among other things). What was really interesting was that even though we could have easily given these books and Bibles away to the very poor men and women touring the book exhibition, there was a distinct choice that was made to have everyone pay something for the pieces of literature they wanted.

I remember asking one time why they made people pay money - that they had very little of - for Bibles. The answer was very simple: “People value what they pay for.”

We have created a product that is easily worth $20,000. We understand that most ministries cannot afford a $20K website, so we chose to offer a product at a price point any ministry can afford.

Part of the reason why we offer websites for $1000 rather than $999 is this idea of this concept of respect. We might be able to sell more with a price point of $999, but we firmly believe that people will respect the product much more if they have committed thousands of dollars rather than hundreds.

Maybe sometimes it’s worth selling your information for a chance of a free T-shirt or an iPod Shuffle. We can’t determine that for you. But for us, we decided early that we probably won’t sucker you in with a month of free hosting or a chance for a month of back-rubs from Ben. We believe that if you have looked for 5 minutes on the web for any sort of solution for your ministry’s web problem, Clover will emerge as the best, strongest, and most price-effective solution for you.

For those that need the free T-shirt or pen to entice you to purchase our product, Clover is probably not the right fit for you. We just make great websites. Nothing more, nothing less.

I really believe that the day is coming when the more honest you are about your product/ministry/self, the more respect and trust you will recieve. We are trying to model this with our little product and company, but plan on forever using this model in our lives. People are friends with people they trust.

//Jim