Have you seen in your local hypermarket where some sales promotion girls offer visitors some sample of their promoted products? This traditional marketing is still valid today for ANY promotion, including promoting your products or services online.
Use the traditional marketing approach and give away free samples of your product from your website. After giving away the samples, follow up with an email. Ask the people who received a sample what they thought, if they had any problems, and if they have any questions. Direct samples to their website for more information and discounts on purchasing the regular version of the product.
To do the follow-up you need an autoresponder account where you integrate your web form in it. The flow is that visitors see your sales letter or your website offering your products and services. On the web page, include a small box consisting of your web form and an attractive message telling them to sign up for samples of your products.
I have this experience of one of the most successful internet marketers offering their paid newsletter subscription by giving one of the newsletter issues. After signing up for your free newsletter sample, I received a few emails asking me to fill out the feedback form to ask for my opinion on the sample I received. You encouraged me to fill out the feedback form by giving another issue of your newsletter, I will of course fill out the quick feedback form that you have kindly prepared for me with multiple answer options for me to choose from, and then I got your next sample which confirms the quality of your service. You can then use the positive feedback as a testimonial to your service to increase the credibility of your website.
Learning from past experience, in your follow-up you should create a form to ask your sample receiver for feedback. Be sure to make the process easier for the recipient by providing multiple choice of feedback questions so they don’t have to think too hard about what to write on their feedback form. Think about the type or responses you expect from them.
It’s easy for products like e-books or software and it’s common for e-book writers to offer their first chapter to their prospects. I saw someone recently launch their new ebook by creating a “leaky” chapter to generate pre-purchase minded visitors before launching their new ebook to market. Also for software producers, it is common to offer a demo version of their software to their visitors. The software will have some links to the producer’s website so that more repeat visitors are ready to buy.
If you have multiple products, you might consider staggering your free samples. Ask if visitors would like to be notified by email when their free sample changes. This gives you permission to email visitors regularly to remind them about the show.
You can also update them with new information about your site, your products, or your company. This will entice them to visit your site again. Be sure to include your signature file in your email message.
Free samples also provide a great viral marketing opportunity.