When the idea of try before you buy marketing came around, the internet wasn’t even in existence yet. Businesspeople were offering others the chance to ride around on a bicycle before making their purchase, or wearing a pair of stockings for the day before deciding that they were in fact the superior choice. Nowadays try before you buy marketing is still popular, but the online marketplace has been slow to catch on. This is in part because of the delivery issues an online model can place, but also because consumers haven’t shown a demand for it, until now. With the cost of living skyrocketing, people are more concerned than ever with making purchases that they might regret. With this in mind, many businesses are offering try before you buy models for their goods and services online. These are some of the sectors that are taking this marketing trend seriously and why you should think about buying into it.
Leisure
Online and leisure might not seem like the most natural partners, but actually, an increasing number of us are spending the majority of our leisure time online. For example, the gaming industry is perhaps the single sector that offers a try before you buy scheme the most frequently. A good example of a provider that really puts its money where its mouth is in terms of allowing customers to try out a game before parting with any money is VegasSlotsOnline. As well as reviewing casinos for customers, they also provide both paid-for and free slots games. Whilst providing free slots might seem counterproductive if they want to make money, it’s actually beneficial for both provider and customer. The customer is able to play slot games for free to see if they like them and if they do, they’ll likely make a deposit and pay to play. This means that by providing customers with a little generosity, the company can gain a new customer which is hugely valuable to them.
As well as gaming, many of us enjoy reading online, whether that’s a newspaper, magazine, or downloading e-books to use with an e-reader. Plenty of companies in these sectors are also using try before you buy marketing to promote their products. Almost all e-readers come with a free book and the majority come with unlimited access for a set period of time, allowing customers to properly try out all that their publication has to offer before committing to a purchase.
Software
Software is one of the areas where this kind of marketing is the most easily applicable. There are no delivery problems to speak of, as everything can be downloaded directly onto a device. The only consideration that suppliers need to make, is ensuring that the product is either not a full version, or cannot be used past the specified amount of time. Once the coding is completed for that, customers can get to know their new software, before deciding if they’d like to go ahead with the free purchase.
Anyone who uses a Windows computer will know about the regular updates that Windows makes to its software, in fact, we’ve written about them at Sifetbabo before. Whilst Windows offers all of its updates for free to its customers, they still offer them on a basis where you can try the software before making the change. For example, a user might be used to Windows 10, try Windows 11 and not find it as user-friendly, so decide to switch back. This is all enabled by Windows. However, when it comes to their Office packages, Windows don’t give these out for free and instead gives customers a free 14-day trial to decide if the Office package is something that they want to purchase.
Clothing
Until very recently, the ability to try on clothing before you buy online was unheard of. Customers would have to buy several different sizes of clothing, try them all on to find the best fit and then return the ones that they didn’t want. Once this was completed, they’d have to wait for a refund on the items they didn’t buy and hope that they didn’t get charged for return postage. Seeing the glaring error with this way of doing business, a couple of companies, including Amazon, decided to take payment details for their clothing items, but not take payment until the customer has confirmed which ones they would like to keep. This requires the business to hold more stock and it restricts their cash flow slightly, but it works brilliantly for the customer and could certainly divert them, customers, from business who don’t offer the same benefits.
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