The Persuasive Power of Discounts and Trials
With the holiday season quickly approaching, people start to browse the web for sales and deals. Being in marketing, I couldn’t help but notice and think about all the different techniques and approaches that move prospective clients further along in the purchasing decision. This is one of the most important areas that we as marketers and business minded people can and should focus on when marketing to potential clients.
The purpose of this article is to shed some light on ways to attract clients to your service and get them to go further into the buying decision. Another reason is to give you ideas as to how you can position your products and services and more attractively offer them to your client base.
Market Discount Trends
Currently, the marketplace is experiencing a growing trend in sales and marketing promotions. Recently, there has been a high success rate with promotions that offer free trials and discounts.
There are two types of sales and marketing promotions that are growing trends that I see success in the marketplace is quite often a free trial and offering discounts. Online vendors are beginning to offer a 7-day or 30-day free trial of a product or service. When signing up for an offer, you are asked to enter your credit card information. Upon trial expiration, you are then charged the full amount for your product or service. That is how they get you – and hook you in! Typically people end up liking the service that they are testing out and do not cancel the trial…so in this regard it is a good way to draw people in and actually get them to use the product or service. Many services are subscription based too, charging your credit card a recurring fee and subscription sites are a great way to deliver information and provide a great deal of value for both the buyer and seller. Companies are providing free trials to allow you to experience the product or offering before any actually exchange of money takes place. Those who continue on with the product or service are more loyal and better informed about what they are buying. Discounts are also very beneficial when a client is cost conscious or bringing on a large volume.
So now the question to ask yourself is how I can apply this methodology of a free trial or discount to my own products and services?
Think about the products that you are currently marketing or selling. Is there a way to give your prospective clients a sample of what you offer them? Free trial for a month of service? Free trial of consulting services or technical support? Free marketing materials? Free training sessions? Discounts on a service? These actions will help to get your clients hooked on your product by making it a more attractive offer to start with the service and by showing them that you want to help.
On a side note, free trials are not ideal for every company or every product. However, they do force you to reconsider how you expose your products and services to your target market. Rethinking the value of a trial can help boost your marketing to the next level. The key is to experiment with different offers, discounts, trials, etc. and see what works for both you and your clients. You should measure how many prospective clients partake in the initial offer and then show interest in the upsell or continue to purchase services. It is very important to focus on customer value, not just the initial purchase price or getting the sale and promotions can help to accomplish that.
How can ExchangeDefender help?
Since ExchangeDefender offers you a free 30-day trial on new services and discounts on services, it is easier for you to do the same to your clients!
Currently, at ExchangeDefender, in addition to our normal free trials, we are introducing a new promotion for Exchange 2010 Essentials and also ExchangeDefender Compliance Archiving. Any accounts that our partners sign up during that promotional period with the corresponding coupon code will receive Exchange 2010 Essentials for $5.99/mailbox and thus far the promotion has been wildly successful, for both our company and in turn our partners!
Action Plan
– Visit our Promotions Center to stay up to date with all of our current and upcoming promotions that are available to you!
– Contact me for any help with marketing collateral or visit our Marketing Center.
Also, we always offer free 30-day trials for all of our products that you should take advantage of. This is very appealing for our partners because they get to try out a service and are then more apt to continue using the service. I would guess that about 99.999% of the people who sign up for trial accounts end up keeping them. These are all promotions that you could use with your clients. Remember some people just need a little push to do something…so help make the decision for them – Offer a discount or trial!
Let me know if or how you are using free trials and how successful they are for you! As always, please let me know if there is anything that I can help with!
Stephanie Hasenour
VP, Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x735