saas marketing strategy - free trial success secret 3: stop confusing freemium and free trials
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SaaS Marketing Strategies to Make Your Web App DominateSaaS Marketing Strategy Focus: Scalable Customer AcquisitionThrough scalable SaaS Marketing practices, Sixteen Ventures lead by Lincoln Murphy, provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Web App companies everything they need to acquire customers, improve retention, and grow the lifetime value of those customers.New Challenges – and Opportunities – Require an Optimized SaaS Marketing StrategyThe cloud introduces new challenges for traditional Independent Software Vendors (ISV), but even for those who are building new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Web Applications (Web Apps) from scratch, many challenges exist, with marketing being one of the biggest.The Goal of Your SaaS Marketing Strategy: to Quickly Create Profitable CustomersBecause Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web Apps are very often sold on a recurring revenue, monthly basis – without a large upfront payment like traditional software – the key to successful SaaS Marketing is efficiency and scalability.Payback Customer Acquisition Costs Quickly with a Great SaaS Marketing StrategyRegardless of the type of sales process, SaaS Marketing requires you to leverage scalable methods to attract the right audience up-front, to get the customer to try before they buy, and the methods used to convert your prospect to a paying customer.SaaS Marketing ultimately breaks down to a per-customer cost and should be paid back as quickly as possible in an effort to turn new customers into profitable customers.But, when your Free Trial fails to convert customers, it’s probably doing exactly what it was designed to do!You need to design your Free Trial to actually sell your product if you want to make any money in the SaaS or Web App business.So I’ve put together a list of 7 Secrets to Free Trial Success... how to turn your SaaS Marketing efforts - your sales process - and your Free Trial - into a Customer-Creating Machine.This is SaaS Marketing / Free Trial Domination Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium and Free TrialsTRANSCRIPT
The 7 Secrets toFree Trial Success
Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!
Lincoln Murphy Presents...
http://sixteenventures.comLincoln Murphy
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Secret #3: Stop Confusing
Freemium & Free Trials
Lincoln Murphy
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Freemium is when you have a free-forever version of a product that never expires - allowing the user to have the expectation of never having to pay - coupled with an upsell path to a premium version of the same product.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
A Free Trial is a free, time-limited (and sometimes feature-limited) version of a product with two possible outcomes for the trialist; buy the product or stop using it.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The lack of an expiration date - and therefore the idea that the user will never have to pay for the product - is the KEY PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVER behind Freemium and the MASSIVE differentiator between Freemium and Free Trials.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
No one signs-up for a Free Trial with the expectation they'll be able to continue using it past the end of the trial.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
They know they either pay or stop using it. Period. It is a Try-before-you-buy-or-go-away situation.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
If you think that Freemium is an extended “try before you buy” situation you will end up with sub-optimal (read: horrifically business-killing) results.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It is well documented that the most successful Freemium companies have overall conversion rates in the low single-digits, around 3-5%.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
This has led many SaaS & Web App vendors with Free Trial conversion rates of 5% to think they’re doing just fine.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
What they don’t understand is that a 3-5% conversion rate for Freemium is actually pretty good considering the huge barriers to conversion the underlying psychology puts up, but for Free Trials, it is HORRIBLE.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But it isn’t their fault for thinking that; when it comes to Freemium and Free Trials, people don’t understand the fundamental - and psychological - differences like you do now.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But these misunderstandings around Freemium and Free Trials shouldn’t be surprising.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
With Freemium, the concept of survivor bias is alive and well in ‘media’ coverage; you rarely hear how many used the same strategy and crashed and burned!
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And Free Trials have been used in SaaS and Web Apps since the beginning and have been around in one form or another for over 100 years... so they aren’t new.
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And yet it is very clear that, even though they’ve been used for years, that how to successfully use Free Trials is still very unknown and few companies take full advantage of the power of Free Trials... until now, right?
Lincoln MurphySecret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials
For the Ultimate Free Trial Resource Guide, visit:
http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide