Need advice! Has anyone tried using a free offering to attract clients?
Has anyone tried using a free offering to attract clients?
As example:
- A free initial plan
- Free first month
If anyone has tried this what has been the result for you?
If you don't recommend this, what can be an alternative?
Trending on Indie Hackers
Don't know if this helps but for a few months, I offered free resume / LinkedIn Profile reviews as a means of 1. brand building, 2. true value delivered and gauging the marketplace's needs. This was for a small professional services biz in Shanghai I've been running for 5 years now (60% Chinese going for MNC positions, 40% foreigners all over the world). I was really unhappy with the experience overall. Clients were extremely demanding and requesting 1-2 rounds of reviews after the initial report was created. Could I have laid out expectations better? Probably but I missed that aspect in the midst of providing full service offerings too. Once I changed to a modestly priced paid service, I got much higher quality leads and conversions to full service editing and LIP enhancement jobs. I also had a similar experience after creating some online email drip courses. We're pivoting to a new B2B strategy providing support services to SMBs and startups (still under the radar) but I've become a big proponent of charging for work to be taken seriously and to draw in like-minded professionals. www.weisisheng.cn and www.bighire.io
Thank you for sharing your experience @BigHireio. I'm running a productized service engagebound.com.
30 day money back guarantee.
The answer to it depends a lot on the kind of product you're offering. A free trial works wonders for tools and products where the customer has to invest their time and mind in the free trial. Once you have them invested and engaged in your product (which obviously happens when the product is valuable enough), you will see your conversions rising.
A great alternative is offering templates/resources for free in your content. It's not only a great lead magnet, but also keeps your audience hooked to your offerings. Hope that helps. Feel free to get in touch if you need to discuss anything. Good luck!
We are working on some free resources now. As an example, we offer unlimited designs at engagebound.com and we are creating free design templates they can use. It's a great way to keep them hooked. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I feel the urge to chime in here. There is a difference between B2B and B2C offerings. In B2B the bar is often very high for customers to get in in the first place. You can lower the barrier of entry by saying something like, here just try it out and get a look and feel before you put one million on the table. That is legit. In B2C what you do not want is to make your revenue stream available for free. As per my experience that creates the false impression of engagement and what you end up with more often than not is churn. One approach perpetuates the flywheel. The other dries it out.
Yes, we changed Done Dave to a free service and basically the feedback is overwhelming.
People really love an honest, free product with no catch. It just feels good, especially in today’s environment where we all need something good in our lives.
A little boost to make your users smile, so offering a free version or package will pay dividends later on as it will give your company positive credibility and create a buzz that you actually care about providing a good service to help people out.
I can vouch that it’s certainly working for https://donedave.com
I hope this helps.
wow! Thank you for your insight. I'm running a productized service company engagebound.com and providing first 7 days free/money back guarantee now.
Brilliant, yes give it a try! Good luck!
Hope your question is not restricted to subscription based services. I make landing page templates and used to offer a few for free to attract users and offer the rest as premium downloads. Sales of premium products were very poor. Since I offered ALL items for free and made a Pro Version for each one that can be purchased by the user if he needs a little bit more features, the traffic doubled and sales have gone up at a reasonable level at this point. Much better than before. If you have questions let me know. What product are you planning Shushrut?
wow! That's an amazing strategy to provide exclusive features as a premium plan. We've launched a productized service engagebound.com and trying our best to optimize pricing and value to attract customers.
I'm also planning some online courses and your tactic can be used very well there. Can I have a look at your website?
I've studied your website and offering. I think that a 3 day free trial of your service would bring many quality leads but at the same it would generate quite a cost since you'd have to offer custom work in this time.
Looking at the prices I thing you are targeting small business and above. So you could have this condition on your free trial registration form. The user should be a registered company or something like that to increase the quality of the leads, to make it worth the big cost.
At the same time even if the cost is high I think it would be a really efficient tactic instead of investing in other actions which will never get you talking to customers so directly.
As @Harshitbhatia mentioned it would engage the customer with your company and make him invest time in working with you. You can test it for a limited period of time 1 or 2 months and keep costs reasonable this way.
My website is https://inovatik.com
That’s really an amazing analysis @Inovatik! Thank you so much for your suggestions so that I can keep my priorities in check.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
Love the idea of "splintering a piece of the product off and giving it away for free". I'm running a productized service engagebound.com and I will better go for a 14/15-day trial/money-back guarantee. Thanks for your thoughts.