17 Ways to Promote Your Free Trial Using Social Marketing

Our friends at Socialtext recently launched a 30-day free trial of their “let’s all work together” social software (Check it out). Why? It’s an easy way for prospects to test-drive their product (while jumping head first into the marketing funnel).

Well, it got us thinking about the question: how should you market your free trial? And we don’t mean just by using the run of the mill corporate website + PPC ads promotion plan (yawn), but by leveraging social media marketing. That’s more interesting!

Here are 17 ideas we came up with:

  1. Offer “social sign on” for the free trial registration process
  2. Add social sharing widgets to your free trial landing page
  3. Prompt trial users to share via social from the trial registration “Thank You” page
  4. Promote ways to engage with your company’s social resources in your trial “onboarding” emails
  5. Put a free trial call to action on the closing page of your presentations on SlideShare
  6. Create a Facebook App to promote your free trial from your company’s Facebook Page
  7. List your free trial under “products and services” on your LinkedIn Company Page
  8. Let trial users ask questions of your satisfied customers by inviting them to an exclusive LinkedIn Group for prospects and customers
  9. Tweet consistently about your free trial – remember to keep it fun, intriguing, and helpful
  10. Invite industry experts and special guests to join a Twitter chat with your free trial users
  11. Write a blog post about a customer success story that started with a free trial
  12. Incorporate a link to your free trial in the comments you leave on relevant industry blogs and articles
  13. Experiment with promoting your free trial using social advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
  14. Include a link to the free trial in your email signature
  15. Mobilize your brand advocates – arm them with the key info and turn them loose!
  16. Host a “Google Hangout” where your team can do a live Q&A session
  17. Record video answers to frequently asked questions and post them to YouTube

(Any other good ideas we missed? Let us know!)

Guess what?

Many of these ideas can be used to promote any of your products and services. So, give them a spin and let us know how it works out.