4 simple steps to offer an effective free trial

1. blog.getsocial.io
http://blog.getsocial.io/4-simple-steps-to-offer-an-effective-free-trial/#gs.63dd3c3c38cf4dcd9f55309ce23de60a
find-the-right-customer
determine-a-length
João Romão Novembro 4,
2014
4 Simple Steps to Offer an Effective Free Trial
Everyone loves free stuff right? Right. What’s to lose when you get a free trial? Well, nothing if you’re the
recipient. But have you ever wondered what’s in it for the companies? What’s in it for them when they are giving
stuff away for free?
At a quick glance, free trials for a service just look like a fast way for companies or startups to waste time and
money—companies give things away, never to see or hear from the customers again.
But think again.
We’ve analyzed the benefits and the drawbacks of offering freebies in an earlier post, (“Free trials: Should they be
offered?”) and found that the pros of free trials outweigh the cons, making them a smart investment after all.
However, this move will only prove profitable with proper execution, which is why we’ve identified 4 simple steps
that companies and start-ups can take in order to make their free trials cost-effective and advantageous.
Step 1: Find the Right Customer
Why would you buy a product if you have no need for it?
You probably wouldn’t, even if you were offered it for free
beforehand.
This step will make sure that the company is not trying to giving away their product or service to people that could
care less, resulting in wasted efforts, time, and money.
How do we prevent this? By identifying the target of the product.
As previously mentioned in the other post, one of the reasons companies offer free things is to increase the
number of people that use their product. However, companies should set boundaries, narrow their focus, and
know what type of customers they want to attract in order to tailor their offering and make it more appealing to their
desired target. This especially applies when giving away free stuff.
Identifying the target is extremely important when introducing a product to market and should not be neglected
when offering free trials. By targeting customers, companies can reach people that didn’t even know that there is a
product to suit their needs.
Not only will finding the right target allow the company to convert and retain customers, (because the target has a
need for the product) it will also allow them to find more customers through the existing ones (“Social Shopping Is
All About Homophily (or Birds of a Feather Shop Together)“). Free offerings are often a talking point among
customers—and appealing to the right target audience will spread the news of this offering, make giving away the
samples worth the investment.
Step 2: Determine a Length
The nightmare scenario in this case would be giving
away way too much for free. Just because you can,

2. decide-what-features-to-include
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doesn’t mean you should. This applies to companies that want to demonstrate the valuable potential of their
product offering and then just end up giving away the whole thing for free!
Determining the length of a trial period is especially essential for small companies with a leaner marketing budget.
We conducted a benchmarking procedure among 42 small companies offering free trials and found that the
majority of the companies offered a free service from two weeks to a month (18 companies offered a free
trial of 30 days, while 20 companies offered a free trial of 14 or 15 days). The rest of the companies offered free
trials ranging from one week to two months.
The length of the service offering can be determined differently for every company and looking at the duration of
other free offerings can be a suggested indicator of how long trials should normally last. In this case, the length of
a free trial for small to medium web-based companies should range between two weeks to a month.
Benchmarking free trials with similar companies will prevent the problem of giving away too much.
Determining a trial length is crucial in preventing the abuse of freebies by customers, which brings us to the
next point.
Step 3: Decide What Features to Include
Often I find that when I am offered a free trial, I am mildly
annoyed that they didn’t just offer the whole service for free.
Yet, I am curious as to what features are included in a paid
version of the product.
I was recently offered a one-month free trial of a premium account in addition to my (basic) free account on
LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn pretty often, but I didn’t realize the true value of the premium account until I was able to
use it for free during the limited time of one month.
After my trial was over, I felt compelled to continue buying the service because I knew that by paying for a
premium account, I could get the maximum value out of LinkedIn and this would eventually grant me a return
through the ability to make more connections and expand my network.
This means that in order to realize their true value, the customer needs access to special features for a
limited time.
Customers should be offered a free sample of the product with minimal features, but just enough to recognize the
added value of the offering. Limiting access to the full service is key to maintaining a realistic balance of what
customers expect in a free trial. A good way to control the features used in free trials is to strategically decide
which ones will be included through tiers.
In our analysis of 63 companies, we found that the companies had an average of 3 tiers of services for customers
to choose from. Tiers help companies organize their service offerings and decide what features to include or not to
include. Each one of these tiers is designed to fit the needs of the customer, with price reflected in the
service offering.
Step 4: Follow Up
Following up once the free trial is over, allows a
person to cancel their subscription if they do not find a
need for a service. But this is only one of the reasons
why companies should follow up on their customers.
The main reason to follow up involves educating customers. Essentially, customers can receive offers for dozens
of awesome and beneficial free trials, but the trials are utterly useless if customers do not know how to use the

3. product.
Without proper knowledge of how to use the product, customers cannot see the real value of having it,
and will not purchase it after the trial is over.
Guidance, coaching, and information involving the product should be started in the free trial and continued after
the customer decides to purchase the product. This last step means that when the trial is over, companies should
continue to keep working to ensure that customers know about the other features their product has to offer,
especially in the case of tiered offerings as mentioned in Step 3.
This ensures that customers continue to extract the maximum value from the product, guaranteeing renewed
subscriptions. Offering these services during the free trial not only gives the customers a pleasant experience, but
also reminds them that customer service support will be available for them throughout their use of the service.
Are there any particular free trials out there that you found immediately converted you? Which ones and
why? Comment below!
NEXT READ: read our very first interview in GetSocial’s Blog! We talked with Derek Muller from Veritasium and
he left a lot of interesting insights about Facebook and Digital Marketing in general – GetSocial Interviews Derek
Muller (Veritasium) – Part I.
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