You’ve probably taken advantage of an offer like this yourself, at least once in your life. The free trial offer allows the customer to try out the product for a limited amount of time to see if they like it before they have to pay for it.

This kind of offer instills confidence in the customer because they can try before they buy to make sure the product will perform the way it is supposed to. Although free trial offers are often used to market software, you can use this type of pricing strategy to market a variety of products and services.

Some Free Trial Offers Require Credit Card Information

Some free trial offers require the customer to enter credit card information so that their account will automatically be charged if they do not cancel after the free trial period expires. This is probably the way most free trial offers work because marketers feel they have a better chance of keeping the customer if the customer has to do nothing for the offer to continue.

Alternatively, if you do not require credit card information up front, then the customer may use the product or service for the free trial period and then never enter their credit card information in order to continue. Also, since many customers may not have a credit card or even a debit card, they won’t be able to continue with the product or service past the free trial offer anyway.

It is completely up to you as to which strategy you want to use however, with today’s economic dynamic, it is not difficult for customers to obtain prepaid debit cards that they can use to shop online. So even if they don’t have one to begin with, if they want your product or service bad enough, they can usually obtain one.

You might even try split testing the offer to see how many customers you can retain by offering the free trial offer with and without requiring credit or debit card information.

Some Free Trial Offers Offer Limited Functionality

Often, free trial offers provide only limited functionality, especially if the product is a software product. Customers who use the free trial version may not be able to do all the things the paid version offers. This is also often the case with membership sites where the free version offers a limited access.

Look closely at the products and services you are marketing to see whether or not your business could benefit from offering a free trial version of whatever it is you have to offer. This can be a great way to bring in new customers who may not be sure your product will meet their needs. Letting them try it for free, even with limited functionality, provides a valuable service to customers and opens the door for you to gain more customers.

Not only should you be testing your content on a regular basis but you should be testing your prices too. You can do this yourself without using any software by running the same ad, offer, or salespage with two different prices to see which one brings the most sales.

Alternatively, you can use Google’s Website Optimizer to test several aspects of your site, including your prices. With this tool, which is free, and can be used with or without AdWords, half of your customers are sent to your website with one price listed (or define any other testing criteria) and the other half are sent to your identical website with only those parameters that you specified changed.

With all the options Internet marketers have for pricing it can be difficult to figure out which price is the right one, especially for those marketers who have no previous experience. Understand, though, that even the most experienced Internet marketers have to constantly test their prices and other aspects of their Internet marketing campaigns to know what is working and what isn’t working.

When you use a tool like Google’s Website Optimizer, your stats are collected and analyzed so that you can easily tell which prices are converting and which ones aren’t.

While you’re testing prices, you might as well test other parameters as well, such as headlines and other parts of your offer.

You’ll receive detailed reports that will help you to easily understand which parts of your offer work better than others.

Split-testing doesn’t have to be a dreaded chore even if you don’t use any software to help make the job easier. You can simply list two identical offers with different prices and track your stats to see which offer is converting better. Realize, though, that split-testing, like many other aspects of Internet marketing, is an ongoing process.

Once you get the results of your first test, change your parameters and test again.

You may have a great product and still lose sales because it is priced too high or too low so it is important to find just the right price that consumers are willing to pay. Priced too low, consumers may feel that your product is not a quality product. Priced too high, consumers may feel that it is overpriced or they may not be able to afford it.

That’s why it is crucial to split test so that you can find the price that will continue to bring sales.