There are few words more powerful than free when it comes to rousing us to action, prompting us to surrender information, and motivating us to spend money. But, FREE isn't always free.
Ali Abdullah wrote a terrific article recently called, “The Power of Free.” It’s well worth reading in its entirety. It turns out that there are few words more powerful than free when it comes to rousing us to action, prompting us to surrender information, and motivating us to spend money. |
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In the same article, Abdullah quotes Martha C. White on the power of free for businesses:
- Consumers are inclined to buy more.
- Customers become willing to pay a higher price for it later.
- Items increase in value when they’re free instead of when they’re discounted.
- Brands can leverage freebies to upsell other goods (e.g. buy one, get one or get a free gift bag when you spend $75 or more).
- Recipients are 20% more likely to spread word-of-mouth.1
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Did you notice the first point: “Consumers are inclined to buy more”? It’s important. In my field of databases, it’s not unusual for the database or application vendor to throw in free “performance optimization software” because anything that’s free is catnip for our brains—irresistible. Dan Ariely is quoted in the article as saying free “only had an upside. It creates an emotional reaction. It makes us value it more.”2 |
Here’s the problem: free “performance optimization software” can:
- Make the database slower—not faster.
- Fail to provide the most important information about the state of the database.
- Fail to significantly optimize the performance of the database.
All of the sudden the “free” software leads to problems that can take millions of dollars to fix.
But there’s another way to make free work for you. You can the take free 15-Second Challenge from DBI software. We’ll send you three small SQL scripts. Each will take five seconds to run. Those scripts tell us exactly where the slowdown is in your database, and how bad it is. Once we’ve pinpointed the problem, our patented, award-winning technology will typically fix your problem in four hours or less. This is the kind of free that really does add to your bottom line!
There’s a reason why eight of the top 25 retailers engage us—we empower them to get much more out of their databases—for much less. This not only helps them avoid costly purchases, it also helps them do more with the CPUs, memory, and licenses they already have.
What You Must Know
Free is catnip to customers—and if you’re a customer, make sure “free” doesn’t cost you more in the long run.
If your IBM DB2 LUW database isn’t keeping up with performance demands, or if you’ve just been handed an emergency purchase request for CPUs and memory—or you want to prevent this from happening in the first place—contact us. We’ll diagnose any database problems for free in about 15 seconds, solve a problem in two hours or less, and save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in CPU’s, memory, licenses, consulting fees, and wasted time. Frankly, we’re not very popular with hardware and database license vendors, but your CFO, shareholders, and customers will love us.
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2Ibid.