Advantages of Using A Free Trial Offer
Author : Robert Mcdonough
If you search the Web for discounts, freebies, or product promotions, you will most likely see that many companies have free trial offer. You will specifically find health and software companies offering these promotions of their products. This is an effective way of encouraging potential customers to purchase their products as they can simply return or discard the product if it does not work for them.
Most often than not, companies introducing or launching new products have free trial offer in order to make their target market interested. The consumer does not lose anything as these companies do not require any payment. However, these companies have specific terms and conditions, which the consumer has to abide with in terms of trying the product for free. Normally, the company offering no cost trials sets out a specific period of trying out the product for free.
A free trial offer is both beneficial to the company offering it and the consumer trying the product. For the company, this will allow them to market their product more efficiently as compared to other marketing strategies. This is because most people get encouraged with the term “free.” On the other hand, companies offering no cost samples of their products are the ones that are confident enough that consumers will purchase their product. Those companies that are quite doubtful of their products do not offer these at all. In addition, companies offering no cost samples are confident that other people who have tried the product will recommend it to other people. This leads to another marketing strategy, which is referred to as word of mouth marketing.
Consequently, a consumer can also benefit from obtain a free trial offer. Say, if the consumer wants to try out a skin care product, a free sample can be obtained to save the consumer from spending money on a product that does not work for him or her. Through a free trial offer, a consumer can determine the effects of the product on him or her and decide whether to purchase the product. This will also save the consumer the time in trying to find out which product works best. These programs are usually the best alternative in finding the most appropriate solutions to any problem a consumer faces.
In addition, free trial offer programs allow the consumer to be familiar with the products. The period for the promo usually lasts until the possible effects of the product on the consumer are obtained. This is another way of companies offering the product to gather feedbacks from consumers who have participated in their offer. Thus, they can easily improve their products and provide better service for their consumers in the future.
When a person comes across a free trial offer they may not think it’s a good idea to take advantage of it. Valid companies present a free trial on their products as a trial offer is a risk free way for you to decide if something works for you.
Blogs As Advertising Vehicles
Alternative marketing has now been around long enough to be out of it’s infancy. Buzz marketing and guerilla marketing have now become recognizable tactics in the marketer’s arsenal, and consumers are becoming immune to them. This loss of effect is nowhere near the precipitous drop that traditional television and print advertising have undergone in recent years, but it nevertheless exists.
Consumers are inherently wary, and they are inherently distrustful of marketing schemes. The whole point of marketing is to convince consumers to part with their hard-earned money on this particular product, rather than that one. For some things, it’s a matter of convincing that this brand is superior to another. Nearly everyone accepts the need for a cell phone, for example, and so the cell phone companies compete for your business against each other. Who offers better coverage? Who has the lowest priced plans? Who has the most extras to offer? Who has the latest phone technology? Who has the best priced phones? These are the questions that cell phone companies seek to answer.
However, in some things, the marketer needs to convince the consumer not only to buy their particular brand of product, but that they actually need a product of this type at all. This is the luxury goods market, the market that is the most lucrative to get into.
Buzz and word of mouth marketing are particularly effective at this second tier of advertising, convincing people that they need a particular product. The next great trend is all about the luxury life, and being cool enough to be a part of that next great trend. Word of mouth is instrumental in creating this kind of need. It creates the market for the product.
However, word of mouth is becoming old hat. It has been used too often; consumers are experience fatigue with the idea of keeping up with the times. Magazines such as “Real Simple” and “Simplicity” are finding their niches in today’s world.
The constant barrage of cleverness from the alternative marketing universe is becoming as tiresome as the constant barrage of inanity and boredom coming from the traditional marketing universe. People are becoming increasingly more likely to view viral video and street team campaigns with the same cynicism they view commercials.
Alternative marketers are being forced to come up with new ways to build trust in their products and their promises.
Back to Blogs
The search for new, more believable electronic vehicles brings us back to blogs, short for web logs. According to NetLingo, the Internet dictionary, blogs are a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links. When compared with the slick production values of corporate web sites, blogs have the same homespun appeal as fliers stapled to telephone poles: crude but credible.
Blogs are the voice of the everyday person. Anyone with an internet connection can establish a blog. Some of the more intrepid and well-entrenched bloggers buy webhosting services and create their own websites with nothing but their blogs on them, but this is not necessary to enter the blogosphere. Free blog capabilities are available on social networking site such as Myspace, Facebook, and LiveJournal. Additionally, many smaller sites where people interact with each other offer blogging capability to their members. Literally anyone can become a blogger.
Initially functioning as online diaries of a sort, many mutated in the post-September 11 world into virtual political platforms. Catherine Seipp, a contributor to the American Journalism Review, writes “Blog now refers to a web journal that comments on the news-often by criticizing the media and usually in rudely clever tones-with links to stories that back up the commentary with evidence.”
Just ask Trent Lott. Blogs blotted him off the political landscape, courtesy of Internet opinion pages including Instapundit and Talking Points Memo. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman credits these two blogs with keeping the spotlight focused on Lott’s controversial remarks at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party until conventional media were forced to act.
Blogs have also begun to enter the marketing sphere. They are an essential part of the buzz-creating mechanism, especially among the hip young Gen Yers. Young people and professionals increasingly turn to the Internet for services their parents’ would never have thought to be available them through the computer. Phonebooks are online; directions can be obtained. News consumption increasingly occurs online. This makes the Internet a great place to go to attract new consumers, and blogs, because of their homespun appeal, the perfect vehicle to build credibility.
Blogging for Business
However, this homespun appeal also makes blogs a tricky vehicle for advertising. The classic marketing ethics issues of trust and transparency become a huge sticking point for consumers. They trust, initially, that bloggers are who they say they are: namely, just ordinary, everyday people with something to say. When such a person touts a product or brand, people will pay attention, but only if they feel that they can still trust that the blogger is just an ordinary, everyday person.
Bloggers paid to promote a particular might be easy to equate to product placement in a television show, but the analogy is not perfect, and it should not be taken by advertisers as the correct analogy to make. Television shows are inherently fantasy. Actors portray characters that are meant to be ordinary, everyday people, but everyone watching the show knows that this is not actually the case. The audience suspends disbelief for the sake of entertainment.
Bloggers are different. They are not actors portraying a character for entertainment value, they are people expressing personal thoughts and ideas. This creates a state in which paying a blogger to promote a product violates the trust of the audience in a way that product placement in the fantasy world of television media does not.
Given the natural progression of any media, blogs too are being commercialized. Still in their infancy as a business tool, commercial blogging pioneer Macromedia offers pointers to interested marketers on “keeping it real”:
* Appoint company evangelists to author blogs.
* Establish guidelines for postings.
* Accept that blogs are the voice of passionate individuals, not the company.
* Embrace an unwavering commitment to honesty.
However, one must tread carefully when tampering with emerging media. One marketer recently experienced a stampede of negative publicity among the blogging community when it recruited some well-known bloggers to add links to a web site for a flavored milk drink.
Tips for Small Businesses to Market Smart
Author : Art Gib
There are many small businesses in America and they all will need to spend money marketing their business despite the tough economic times if they expect to make it through the tough times. The key for any and all small businesses, more now than ever, is they do not have the luxury of making any big marketing mistakes. The biggest mistake that they can make in this tough economy is to pull back their marketing efforts and not spend any money in moving their business forward.
That is much easier said than done though. However, that is exactly what a small business owner must do. On the flip side of that though, you definitely cannot make the mistake of spending your marketing dollars on something that will not give you a good return. One wrong choice that is a bit too costly can send your business spiraling downward. Here are a few small business marketing tips that I would recommend:
AUTHENTICITY People want to know who they are working with. The more real you can be for your customers, the better. The general idea here is to take advantage of being that small business and not have that impersonal feel of a corporation. You might use things like twitter, facebook and other online sources to make yourself more accessible and real to your customers.
DO IT YOURSELF MARKETING While there are many things that you can do yourself and save money, there are some things that you would be better off hiring out. Make sure that the things you choose to do yourself are things that you have some competence in. Time is money and if you are spending too much time learning the nitty gritty details of search engine marketing or other things that are too time consuming, then you will have spent far more money than you needed to or would have if you would have just hired a professional marketing company. You are also likely to have not gotten nearly as good of results as a specialist could have gotten for you.
3. TECH-DRIVEN WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING Word of mouth taken to internet cable speed. Your satisfied customers can do you a great deal of marketing. They are your best source for recommendations because they carry far more credibility with your potential clients (their friends and family) than you do. Technology can also take the negative word of mouth just as quickly, so be sure to take care of your customers.
http://www.orangesoda.com is the a great resource for small business marketing. When your business needs small business marketing OrangeSoda offers the services you need. Art Gib is a freelance writer.
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