People are often reluctant to buy new products or services. No matter how feature-rich your solutions are, people would prefer things that have been tried and tested compared to what you offer.
This calls for a foolproof strategy that helps you engage the intended audience to ensure higher conversions.
A free trial marketing strategy may come in handy here and help you generate traction for the solutions you offer.
Here, you ask your potential customers to take your products or services for a spin without any financial commitment. This means they get to test your solutions first before making a buying decision.
However, coming up with a free trial marketing strategy that amplifies your conversions may not be as easy as it sounds.
In this guide, we will tell you how to create one for your business and acknowledge a high conversion rate.
What is a Free Trial Marketing Strategy?
Before we proceed with our guide, let’s learn about a free trial marketing strategy and why you need one.
A free trial marketing strategy is a tactic through which you strive to attract a relevant audience by offering them to try your products or services for free.
People often shy away from untested solutions because of the amount they have to pay first in exchange. So, there’s a chance for a financial loss if they don’t like a particular product or service.
Even if a company offers a refund or exchange policy, many find it a hassle to go through a process to get their money back.
This is why having a free trial marketing strategy is important to attract new customers, as it represents a win for both the company and the customers.
The strategy helps the company capture quality leads and allows its potential customers to explore the features before buying the solution.
This may sound like something that’s bound to work. You are literally asking people to try your products or services for a limited time without paying anything up front. What can go wrong?
Creating and implementing an effective free trial marketing strategy is not easy to pull off. And that is where this guide comes in.
How to Design a Free Trial Marketing Strategy
If you’ve been wanting to come up with a free trial marketing strategy that converts, just follow the steps given below:
1. Know Your Audience
Knowing your target audience is the prerequisite to creating an efficient free trial marketing strategy.
You need to be familiar with the needs and preferences of the intended audience in order to tailor a strategy that piques their interest.
It’s reported that 80% of people prefer businesses that offer them personalized experiences. So, it’s a no-brainer that the conversion likelihood may increase if you offer seamless experiences during the trial period.
For this, it’s best that you understand the pain points of your audience and the intent that drives their purchase decisions.
To make it happen, you should collect data about your target audience and analyze it to get useful insights.
You can leverage customer data you already have or use surveys to gather valuable information about your potential customers.
This helps you personalize your offering and makes it highly likely for people to continue using your solutions after the trial ends.
2. Make an Offer
When coming up with a free trial marketing strategy, there are different things that you may want to consider.
Free trials are generally time-bound. So, they will expire after a certain duration. However, you need to carefully decide the time limit for the trial you offer.
Some companies offer access to limited features during the trial, whereas others allow their potential customers to use the product or service to its full potential.
Some free trials even have a usage limit. For example, a free subscription to a VPN may expire after you consume certain bandwidth.
There are different factors that you need to consider to make your offer stand out from other players in your respective industry.
3. Create the Demand
Even if you come up with a well-thought-out free trial marketing strategy, people may not convert after the trial ends.
They may use your solutions as a temporary fix for their problems and may not consider becoming your paying customers in the long run.
Therefore, you should focus on creating a perpetual demand for your solutions. This can be done by showcasing the value proposition associated with your products or services. So, the way you convey your message is the key here.
This is why the strategies of 82% of companies worldwide are fueled by content marketing. Not only do they focus on promoting their solutions, but they also strive to generate awareness, which in turn fuels demand.
This helps you inspire people to keep using your solutions after the trial expires and become your paying customers.
4. Ensure Activity
Even after claiming the free trial, there are many people who choose to remain inactive. This may have a devastating impact on your conversions and kill the very purpose of offering a free trial in the first place.
If people don’t use your products or services, they’ll be less likely to consider purchasing them in the future. So, it’s best to ensure that your potential customers actively use your solutions.
Having a seamless onboarding process may come in handy here and help boost your conversions.
The solutions you offer may have a learning curve, and people may find it difficult to navigate the key functionalities. This may result in them being unable to leverage your products or services to their fullest and achieve the desired results.
It’s your responsibility to educate your potential customers and be there for them in times of need.
There are different ways you can do that, but allowing your customers to reach out to you through live chat or offering support via the help desk may seem like feasible options. You may also consider leveraging social media, as 63% of people expect businesses to offer support through different social media platforms.
5. Follow Up
Keeping your customers engaged may cause your free trial marketing strategy to work and help you ensure more conversions.
During the trial period or even after it has come to an end, try sharing interactive content with your audience to maintain a certain level of engagement.
The best way to do that is by reaching out to your potential customers via email. It’s reported that a well-optimized email campaign may get you an ROI of up to 4,400%.
So, sharing relevant content during the trial period or sending follow-ups after its expiration may help you convert your prospects.
You may also consider a multi-channel approach and reach out to your potential customers via different mediums.
6. Leverage Social Proof
As said earlier, people are often reluctant to purchase products or services from brands they’re not familiar with.
So, even after they’ve tried your products or services, there’s a great chance they may not convert and become your paying customers.
Therefore, it’s highly recommended that you leverage social proof to build trust and foster credibility with trial users.
Around 49% of consumers trust reviews from others as if they were recommendations from their friends and family. So, showcasing the positive experiences of your customers may come in handy.
You can share reviews, success stories, testimonials, and case studies representing the experiences of your current customer base.
It may serve as a push your trial users may need when they’re on the fence with respect to making a buying decision.
Final Words
If you’ve been wanting to boost the conversions fueled by your free trial marketing strategy or are unsure how to come up with an effective one, just follow the steps recommended by this guide to get started.
Why is FinancesOnline free?
Leave a comment!