The benefits of some products or services don’t easily lend themselves to persuasive copy and brilliant photographs. If you’re finding it’s hard to use words and images to convey the usefulness and benefits of your product, consider using free trial periods or free samples to let people know for themselves.
For example, it’s hard to tell if a dry cleaner can really get business shirts bright white and comfortably stiff with starch unless you experience it for yourself by seeing and feeling one. A picture and words can’t quite fully convince people of a dry cleaners’ worth. So one of the best ways for new dry cleaners to get customers is to offer a free sample – one free dry cleaned and pressed shirt can be all it takes to get a new customer.
Many shampoos, laundry detergents and perfume companies employ free samples by including an enclosed packet of their product in catalogs. This is another option if you can make your product in a small enough quantity to be placed in a catalog. This makes your advertising much more interactive.
How to Create a Successful Free Trial Program
The fundamental element of a successful free trial program is to make it simple for people to access and keep it risk free. Don’t make people fill out forms to take part in a free trial. Make it easy for them to participate and only ask for a few pieces of information – like their names and email addresses. Those elements are really all you need to track a free trial.
The Most Popular Free Trial Offer
You have infinite possibilities of how to present a free trial or free product offer. The most popular, though, is the “30-day Free Trial.”
This works well for many reasons. It takes about 21 days for a new habit to form, so by using this kind of trial for something like subscribing to an online database or offering a 30-day free gym membership gives people the chance to establish a new habit. Once customers have gotten used to having something available, it’s hard for them to let go.
If you aren’t sure whether your product or service would work with a free offer, look at your competitors and other businesses with similar products. Do they offer some kind of free service or product for a limited time? If they can do it, you can too. Just brainstorm with colleagues, friends and family – someone is bound to come up with a great idea!
A Semi-Free Trial
A semi-free trial can be considered a “buy one, get one” type of offer. If a customer buys one item, he gets another free. This works especially well for introducing new products to returning customers. This technique is appealing because it lowers the risk for you and for your customer. You get some kind of revenue by requiring a purchase, and the customer gets something that they would have bought anyway along with a free new product that they might have not tried otherwise.
Obviously, free trials and free sample offers work. Companies wouldn’t use them repeatedly if they didn’t. Take the time to calculate how much the free trial will cost you and how many customers you need to buy the product to make the free trial worth it. Then, market your free trial to the number of customers needed and calculate your return on investment. If you made a profit, do it again and again! You’ll get many customers you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, and your current customers will appreciate getting something, however small, for free.
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I agreed with you