Try Before You Buy: An Interesting Online Promotion Type for FMCG Marketing

In a slow economy, getting customers to spend on your products and/or services can be tough to say the least. However, you can entice customers into spending on your business by using sales promotions such as try before you buy. Here is all about the try before you buy promotion and why it works.

Buy and Try online promotions: it’s all about psychology

Ever purchased clothing or gadgets from an online store?

Remember, the first time you considered it?

Were you somewhat hesitant about buying something personal from a store you knew little about?

And, after you made the purchase, did your friends question your decision to buy something you weren’t sure would fit you or work properly?

Why is the above relevant? Because no one wants to be stuck with a product that doesn’t fit well or  work properly. And, if that is the case, expect the customer to badmouth the brand/product whenever and wherever they get the opportunity to do so. Would you want your business to be in such a situation?

Of course not! This is the reason it makes sense for you to use the try before you buy promotion for any new product that you’re offering.

Try before you buy promotions are definitely among online promotions that are designed to get direct sales sales results, as they make it easy for consumers to commit to your product and brand since they know exactly what they will be getting before they actually make a definite purchase with you.

The psychological factor behind this type of online promotion is highly powerful and effective, as it allows consumers to test if the product really fits their needs before committing to it in an absolute way.

Since they are sure that the promotional product will fit well or work properly, customers may order more quantity of the product than they initially planned, which helps you to increase sales, generate more revenue and drive profitability. If you’re wondering how try and buy online shopping works, then continue reading to the answer.


How Try and Buy Promotion Works

The traditional way of shopping online has been buying products outright and then hoping they turn out as advertised or expected. There is a huge risk involved in this for both the consumers and the business selling the product.

For consumers, the risk is obviously not getting what they wanted or expected. For businesses, the risk is disappointed customers badmouthing them on social media, on review sites and even in real life interactions.

Negative reviews or word of mouth can hurt your business more than products selling for less than the market price or generating the estimated revenue due to poor marketing. Put simply, you’d want to avoid negative reviews or word of mouth like a plague.

But, you cannot force customers to write or say good things about your brand and/or products. What you can do is give them reasons not to badmouth your business and become your advocates in the digital realm and in the real world. One of those reasons is try and buy online shopping. Try before you buy promotion is simple to understand and use.

Until a few years ago, interacting with a product before deciding whether to purchase it was possible only at brick and mortar stores. However, try and buy online shopping has come to fore recently to allow customers to interact with a product before purchasing it online. Try before you buy gives e-commerce customers the opportunity to try a product before making a final purchase.

Generally done through the delivery of samples, try before you buy minimizes any gaps that may exist between what a product looks like online and what it looks like once received in person. This benefits not just the consumers, but also the business, as explained above.

The extract process that we at Gotoclient run for buy & try online promotions is what follows below:

5 Benefits of Try and Buy Online Shopping

The list is endless when it comes to the reasons for using try before you buy online promotion. On paper, the fashion and the consumer electronics industries seem to be the biggest beneficiaries of this type of online promotions.

Free Download: eBook ‘3 types of online promotions for direct sales’

However, try and buy online shopping has proven to help many other industries. How exactly is this consumer promotion helping businesses in the various industries? Let’s find out.

1) Attract New Customer Base and Win Repeat Business

Perhaps, the biggest benefit of try before you buy promotion is attracting new customer base. When you allow customers to try your product hassle-free, they get easily lured to your online store.

This promotion removes any apprehension in the mind of the customers about your product and they are more than willing to complete the purchase and then return to you for more purchases.

So, try before you buy promotion not only gets you a new customer base, it also helps you win repeat business.

2) Test a new product launch success (or failure)

As buy & try promotions allow to test the product before the consumer finally commits to buy it, one advantage for businesses is being able to use its results -in terms of ROI and redemption rates- as a way to measure if the product launch is -or will be- successful or not.

Free download here: Digital Promotions ROI Calculator Template

3) Get Positive Reviews and Word-of-Mouth

Earlier, we discussed how not meeting the expectations of customers with your products gets you negative reviews and word-of-mouth.

Well, try and buy online shopping turns the tables by helping you get positive reviews and word-of-mouth. Try and buy online shopping ensures that customers are satisfied with the purchase they make with you.

When this happens, customers are likely to say/write good things about your business and personally recommend your products to friends, family and others. This can help you to drive sales and increase profitability.

5) Reduce Return Rates

Most businesses today have a return & refund policy. If you’re among them, then try and buy online shopping can help you to reduce your return rates.

Since customers can try your product before they make a purchase, they are less likely to return the product and ask for the refund they’re entitled to.

There are several other reasons that make try before you buy an interesting online promotion type for FMCG marketing. Want to know about them? Then get in touch with us today!

4) Competitive Advantage

Currently, not many businesses are using try and buy online shopping to lure customers and your competition is probably among the majority. Most businesses use traditional discount-based online promotions in a total regular basis, which is rather dangerous. Actually this is one of the practices to avoid when creating online promotions

So, by using this online promotion type, you can gain an advantage over your competitors.


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