The secret formula
If someone asks you for the best marketing strategy, what would you say? What would be that secret formula that can gain the best result, gain the trust in customers and sell any product, service or idea? Does something like that truly exist?
Yes, it exists. But, before we dive into the explanation, let’s see a few major things that any company, no matter what the field of business, needs to achieve in order to be successful.
Any company first needs to have the best possible reputation, trust and recommendation among its customers we call branding. Then, the company needs to make maximum profits and try to return the customers back. When companies achieve this, it’s a good way to have a sustainable future for decades to come.
But what is the strategy that can make this ecosystem like this? It’s free trial marketing and worth of mouth marketing.
Now, before we explain how these two strategies work and can be combined, let’s take a closer look at older marketing strategies and discover why they are not as effective as before.
80s & 90s marketing strategy
During the 80s and 90s, when you wanted to sell or promote something, usually you used mass media for it. This means that you use television, radio or printed media like billboards and magazines if your budget is smaller than global companies like LG, Samsung or Sony.
In this kind of advertising your commercial was promoted to everyone that watched television or read a magazine, and you hoped to reach the maximum number of people and convince them to come and buy your service or product.
This type of marketing is very expensive with low rates of return of investment. One minute on television costs a fortune, and you need a lot of sales to cover that minute. Plus, television commercials and the emitting of it it’s not the only thing that you need to pay for.
There are people that produce your product, then people that sell your product – a lot of things to cover before you gain any profit. We can conclude that just big companies that can pay a lot of money for mass media advertising can expect good profit.
Keep in mind that if you are a small company, you can’t afford a marketing campaign like this. You will probably promote your fast food or hair saloon in local radio or magazines, which is much cheaper but the reach is limited, so the profits are, too. And this is actually the circle where just big players earn money while smaller businesses pray for some cash. Same old story, right?
But – and this is a big BUT – luckily times have changed now. The marketing strategy involved and now there are much cheaper and better strategies that anyone can use and make a profit. If you do it in the proper way and if you are a little creative, your business will take a global or a local position. Perhaps so strong that you will be able to rely on your business. Life from it and bring your business to the next chapter of the story.
Free trial marketing strategy
‘Free trial marketing’ strategies have existed for a long time ago, but of course through time it was tested, checked and involved in a way that is predictable and reliable. But, what is free trial marketing?
Free trial marketing is when you go to buy a new car and you have a free one hour ride to test the car. Free trial marketing is when the sales agent offers you to try the massage device in a shopping mall for 30 minutes, free of charge before you decide whether you will buy the product or not.
Free trial marketing is also when you want to buy kitchen equipment and the company gives you a two week free trial of a juice blender. In that way, you can try and test the product for two weeks! You can see the quality, see how it functions, see the product and learn how to use it, then you can decide whether you should buy or not, and you will not be charged if you refuse to buy it.
If you put yourself in your clients’ shoes, you do not need to believe commercials on television, as you have a two week opportunity to see if the product is good or not. And does the company speak truthfully about its product, or is everything a lie?
Now let’s get back into the company shoes. If you are the director that thinks to implement free trial marketing, but need more reason, keep a few more tricks in mind. During the two weeks of free trial, the clients have time to get used to a product and later on refuse to give it back to you.
Look at this closer through an example, again in the clients shoes who work in the office, every day from nine to five. Life is a bitch, right?
So, after work, you feel a big pain in the neck and shoulder as you sit the whole day in the office. For a month you didn’t sleep well, but you don’t want to buy any medicine. One day, on the internet you find a shoulder massager and the company offers you two weeks free trial testing. You order it to try.
After two weeks of using it you don’t feel pain as before and for the first time after a month you sleep for hours without stopping. Finally, you can go and work normally at work, and come home without any pain. Your mood is better now, you feel happier!
But there is a little problem: the two week trial period is over and now you must give the massager back or pay for one. Hmm… The price of 400 euro is not little, but as you can see, the quality of the product is good, plus you don’t want pain to come back.
What can you do? You buy it!
Is this strategy proven? Actually yes, and the example of it comes later in the blog.
Jump on the second part and free of charge from your chair read:
Word of mouth marketing
As we saw, if you promote your company on mass media or the internet in a traditional way, maybe someone will believe you and order your product. On the other hand, when you give to clients your product free of charge to test it and check it, the rate of sales will be higher but the cost of marketing will be lower.
That’s because a minute on television costs you the worth of ten devices that you will use to give the product to potential customers to try it at home, for example. Plus, as you give free-of-charge testing of products, customers will like you and believe you. And that brings us to word of mouth marketing. As when people are satisfied with you, they will recommend you.
And again, as with the example of free trial marketing, word of mouth marketing is a much cheaper but effective way to reach as many people as possible.
The satisfied customers that at first try your product free of charge and feel benefit, then buy it, now will be your walking commercial! Customers will recommend your product to colleagues from work, friends and family. And guess who people trust more? To television and companies that speak positive about themselves or to friends that wanna help them?
Of course, to television (Joke? Or not?).
I hope you realize now what the power of word of mouth marketing is!
With these two techniques, free trial marketing and word of mouth marketing, you will spend as little money as possible and gain as much profit, reputation, branding and trust as possible.
That’s how you will make the ecosystem that will work for you in the best possible way.
Let me now present the best possible way in how these two strategies are combined – the example of unlimited marketing strategy that was mentioned before.
Ceragem – Perfect marketing strategy example
The best example of this kind of advertising is from Ceragem, a company that develops and produces thermal acupressure massager that you can use every day in their center, free of charge. You are not obligated to pay for it or to buy it at any time, never! So, what is the trick?
They have 3,000 centers across the world. Each center has an average of 20 beds and twelve massage sessions per day. So, each center has 240 people visiting at minimum. The trick is that you can’t have an appointment, you must come and wait. And while you wait, you listen to the lectures about health and benefits of using Ceragem’s products. After that, you go and try the massager.
The only condition is, if you want to use Ceragem massage service, you have to come every day, without stopping. The client that wants to use the Ceragem center must invest 3-5hrs each day, five days a week. As people have obligations, 30-40% of people decide to buy a device and use it at home. In this way, the Ceragem company makes a profit.
Those clients who do not buy the device, they can use it free of charge, but as they are satisfied with the benefit, they recommend Ceragem and bring the future users and future buyers of it. It’s a win-win strategy that brings benefits for both sides.
As a picture is worth thousands of words, here is one for you. Well, not a picture, but a video that shows what Ceragem centers look like.
worth of mouth into the digital world – the viral marketing
Now you can say, “Well, all of this is all great, but first thing first: I sell products on the internet, I don’t have a physical store. Plus, even though I have a physical store, all of these restrictions make it impossible to run a business anymore. So, can I implement this strategy into the digital world?”
And as you can guess, the answer is YES. But the real question is HOW?
There’s a lot of examples. As I said earlier, if you sell some home equipment you can offer a two weeks or one week trial to those who want to try it. Also, YouTube is a great example for products that are not physical by its nature.
A lot of people give you very good free detailed tutorials of how to make a website, such as the fundamentals of it. Sometimes, more than enough so that you can get a job or work by yourself. And all you need to do is to invest time and watch video lessons.
That’s also a type of free trial marketing. The video creator allows you to watch videos free of charge. But, when you want to learn some advanced or secret techniques, or you need to know it for your work then you can buy a course. In that way, of course, the Youtuber makes money.
The more people you reach, the more you will earn. And you will reach more people if you give more free trial videos with the greatest explanation. I bet you can find tutorials about how to make them! Hah, this life is fun, isn’t it?
That’s about free trial marketing that you can implement, but what about word of mouth marketing on the internet? There’s a lot of examples, I will give you one of them.
On your website you can enable comments from Facebook, and in that way, your clients can text recommendations. The real experience of the real people that are using your product or service. Then, when potential customers come to your website, you can see the comments of real people that are satisfied with your company.
Now, after you read this blog, free of charge, it’s time to implement some word of mouth marketing and recommend us to other entrepreneurs that you know in your community and help our blog grow.
If you find it useful, you can continue reading our other blogs and make your business work better. And if our blogs make your business bring in a few bucks, send us your story, and we will, you can guess, publish it free of charge to promote your story to the clients that will still read it – free of charge – and in that way we will do word of mouth marketing for you!
Powerful strategies, huh?
Best of luck,
The Business Magazine Team.