Following yesterday’s article, a reader came up with this very good question. I’ll link the conversation below.
Question: “My product doesn’t have any trial period. We do with limited usage.
How can I make sure that maximum people turn to paid ones?”
My answer
I suppose doing the success stories email and even podcast/content piece to be placed somewhere in your funnel doesn’t work, while indeed not as effective as serving it straight after the “free sample”
Mind sharing your industry or maybe even website? If you’re not comfortable with that, telling us why no trial? I can guess that the cost is too high for you but let us know.
The longer answer
I 100% believe eventually you are going to need to give out something for free, whether it’s a trial or content.
I run a design agency, we can’t give out free websites/logos or anything like that, but I write daily and it puts me in touch with people — some just ask for help and then ghost forever but it’s the way the game is.
SaaS is usually about giving trial because it’s easy to share “a piece” of your software for 7 days. I will think about some other short-medium term things (like what I wrote above) you can do but one thing to be definitely looking at is the long term:
Doing something like Michelin did and what I mentioned with the golfing thing in the article. Looking at what your people spend time on especially outside working hours and reaching them there. And it doesn’t have to be the Hell’s Kitchen level of production.
It can simply be a mega-exhaustive guide on how to choose golf equipment, a 3k mega-article.
- Run it in some communities, see if it’s well received, if not try 5 more.
- Take best performing, run ads on it on people who are into your industry AND have an interest for golf
- Funnel continues
That is, assuming you like golf yourself, it’s one of your shared passions with these people that are buying from you. If it’s not golf, it’s something else that you really like (i.e. you spend time on it outside working hours) and that connected you with a paying client some time ago.
Maybe not as broad as ski but look, I help someone who’s having a factory — no kind of content can be interesting in there unless you’re Hydraulic Press YouTube channel and that’s something else.
Maybe his buyers are into super HQ audio equipment so writing about Sennheiser vs Bose vs what not FOR executives can go a long way.
About Ch Daniel
I run Chagency_, an experiences design agency — we help SaaS CEOs reduce user churn. I write daily on this topic and in similar areas. Here are my best pieces.
If I’ve helped you, follow me here and reach out: LinkedIn | Twitter | Email | Quora | YouTube
I’ve also founded an app that went 0-200K users in its 1st year — chdaniel.com/app
If you want a more of a personal connection, here’s how to have that.
Illustration credits: Andrew Kozik
