Build a free side product that brings in leads

Give away a calculator, grader or quiz that draws your buyers to your main product.

Impact
High
Effort
High
Updated

A free side product is a separate, free tool built to bring in leads for your main business. Typical forms are a calculator, a grader, a quiz or an assessment. It works when the tool answers a question your future buyers already have, relates to what you sell, and gives a useful result in a minute or two. It is a high-effort tactic: you are building and maintaining a second product.

How to do it

  1. Start from a question your buyers ask. Look at sales calls and support threads for questions like "how much will this cost us?", "how good is our site?", "which plan fits?". Pick one your main product helps solve, but that a small tool can answer on its own.
  2. Choose the simplest form. A calculator turns a few inputs into a number. A grader scores something the visitor owns, such as a site or a profile. A quiz or assessment sorts people into groups with advice for each. Start with a calculator or quiz, because they are quick to build.
  3. Build the smallest version. No-code builders such as Outgrow, which lists calculators, quizzes and assessments among its products and offers a free trial, can get you live fast. Or write a single page with a short script.
  4. Give the result first. Show a useful answer without a signup. Then offer the full report by email. Asking for an email before showing anything can lose people who only wanted to try it.
  5. Connect the result to your product. The result page should lead naturally to what you sell: "Your score is low on X. Here is how our product fixes X." One button, not five.
  6. Give it its own page and name. A short, descriptive URL and title that says what the tool does help people find and share it. Link it from your main site's navigation.
  7. Track the full path. Count visits, completions, emails collected, and trials or demos that started from the tool. Judge it on trials and customers, not completions.

Examples

  • HubSpot's Website Grader. HubSpot describes Website Grader as a free online marketing and SEO tool. A HubSpot post says it had graded more than 4 million websites. HubSpot later replaced it with Marketing Grader and brought Website Grader back in July 2015, and a version is live at website.grader.com (HubSpot).
  • Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker. Ahrefs offers a free version of its Backlink Checker and describes it as "a glimpse into the power of our premium tool" (Ahrefs). The call to action is to sign up for Ahrefs.

No public data says how many customers either tool produced.

Limits and when it backfires

  • A tool can attract people who will never buy. Students, competitors and curious visitors use free tools too. Judge it by qualified leads and trials, not total visits.
  • It has running costs. Hosting, data, API calls and support all continue after launch. A grader that depends on third-party data can break when that data changes.
  • Emails you collect carry legal duties. Under CAN-SPAM, commercial email needs a clear opt-out that you honor within 10 business days, and a valid physical postal address, and each violating email can carry penalties of up to $53,088 (FTC). That figure is adjusted for inflation, so check the current amount. Rules differ outside the US.
  • A weak result hurts trust. If the calculator output is wrong or generic, visitors will doubt your main product too. Test your numbers against real cases.
  • Going viral cannot be planned. Make the result worth sharing, but do not count on it.

Questions people ask

What is a side product? A standalone product, often free, that sits next to your main one and serves the same audience. Its job is to bring in people who may later buy the main product.

What makes a good free side product? It gives value on its own, complements your main product, and has high viral potential, meaning people want to share the result. Those three conditions come from the original note for this tactic.

Sources

Launching soon? This is one of the pre-launch marketing tactics, listed in the order to start them.

Want word-of-mouth like this on autopilot?

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