Should You Offer FREE Trials for SMMA Clients In 2020?

so ladies and gentlemen should you offer free trials to SMA clients in 2020 let's find out now look don't get me wrong I totally understand the thinking behind free trials its experienced hey maybe if you do a great job for them then they might actually start paying you after a one-month service I mean look we've all tried free trials for Spotify or audible or or this software that software and a lot of times we actually stick you know we become customers after that trial period and hey I mean if you do a good job for

them and they decide not to stay on who cares at least you might get a testimonial from them or a potential referral from them and all of these points make sense I understand it and it's totally flawed so at this point in the video don't click away because let me explain why free trials are a no-go when it comes to social media marketing and more importantly than that what it can tell us about clients psychology the psychology of loss aversion and a bunch of other stuff so first thing that free trials do is they attract

the wrong people you see pretty much anything on this earth when it is given for free you are just going to attract the wrong crowd ask anyone who's experienced at having a marketing agency and they will tell you that a class to pay the most for their services are actually the ones that caused the least amount of headache and have the least input of time compared to the ones that literally they're charging 50 percent maybe even 30 percent as much as their highest retainers for it's crazy how that works right in the same way if

you look at a bunch of different industries for example maybe a tennis coach for example watch dealer for example a travel agent most of time the clan that spends the most amount of money with them is usually the one that is the best is usually the one that is the least hassle expects the least from them whereas the ones that pay the least expect the world and more so that is reason number one that you want to avoid free trials in fact it is crazy what even $100 it's crazy one even one will do if

I was to go ahead and fall for you guys something for free I would just get a bunch of tire kickers but even a one dollar commitment let's say 100 people go for that free offer literally only 50 people would probably go for that $1 offer anytime someone pulls out their wallet and pays even an insignificant amount for something you will merely get a totally different mentality with the sort of person you're dealing with the next reason I wanna avoid free draws is the fact that it builds false feedback loops to make you believe that

you're moving forward now thank God a lot of people out there have kind of come to their senses but I saw this epidemic in 2019 where law the SMA experts out there would actually tell their students to get free trials and in my mind I thought it was super unethical because the reason that they would tell them to do it is this false perception that you're moving forward so that way all these students of theirs would come in and they'd be like oh I tried this thing and it worked I have a client but it's

like no you don't actually have a client that is paying you well done all you have accomplished is giving 30 days of your time to someone entirely free when the person telling you to do that at least if they had any experience out there on the field knows full well that that free trial client will not stick and the reason that is is it brings us on to our third point which is wrong expectations you see I've used this analogy before but if I give one of my friends thousand pounds I'm like look you're the

og you're a homie you were there for me from the beginning it's a new month here here's a thousand pounds just cuz first of all very nice thing to me to do a but the thing is that person would be extremely happy but the next day if I come back and I go hey so sorry emergency come up I'm gonna need 500 of that back but you still get to keep 505 hundreds they've actually just lost 500 pounds even though for 48 priors they had zero comes down to a cognitive bias known as loss aversion

your Ras your reticular activation system focuses on the money that you lost rather than the money that you gain and that kind of bleeds into the whole like oh it's a glass half full or half empty kind of thing so when you are selling a client on a free trial you're going ahead and giving them something for free and even if you bring an immense return for them I mean you're killing it the next month even though they say at the beginning that oh if it goes well you know we'll definitely pay your fee if

you then go ahead and try them $1,000 a month 1,500 month $2,000 a month in their mind they're not thinking oh I got 30 days for free they gone the incredible results and you make sense and I have to pay 2,000 they're thinking damn I went from paying nothing to now having to pay $2,000 a month for this no I'm all right so it sets entirely the wrong expectation and just to go back to my previous point about building that false feedback loop as I said you know you're super excited cuz you get these three

free trial plants and at the end of it you think that it's gonna turn into something and then at the end it doesn't you feel disgruntled and in that time where you brought them on first free trial you were delivering results for them etc etc you could have been out there getting a paying client now I am also very sensitive to the fact that a lot of beginners don't feel comfortable charging a thousand dollars a month fifteen hundred dollars one twenty-five hundred dollars a month trust me I'm aware of that I understand that so here

is what you do instead instead if it comes up you offer a discounted rate because remember earlier in this video I told you if I was to offer people some sort of value proposition for entirely free and 100 people take that if I was just to charge of one dollar for that and get someone to put even in my new financial investment forward that will probably go down to fifty dollars now probably go down from 100 people to 50 people but even with a dollar of investment those people are much higher quality so my point

is as a beginner if you want to be charging let's say $1,500 a month but you're just not at that place where you're coughin yet totally okay you give your clients 50% off the first three months and you should always be signing clients on a three month minimum and then from there rolling you multiply once you give your clients 50% off so you give them a discounted rate or if that still feels like too much money you know what give them 66 percent off by that I mean two-thirds so rather than 1500 months you're charging

five hundred dollars more and if that still is daunting to you whatever just charging $200 a month literally tell them I'm happy to do this for you pretty much almost entirely for free just so I can show you that it works but if I was to charge you nothing for this and make this a free trial then you wouldn't have any skin in the game so I'm only gonna charge you $300 per month for the first three months of this just so you have some sort of buying and you're invested as well that is a

much better way to go about it than doing the free trials now for me and the way that I teach my students I tell them look if you go into with a certain mindset the whole notion of a discount won't even come up like here's the thing for me there was a certain stage in my agency where I had enough reference experience and enough understanding and I went into the meeting with a strong enough frame that it would have just been like outright disrespectful for the client to ask could you do some sort of discounted

price to this suppose my point is for me that was very distinct period in which clients just didn't even dare to ask for it just and the only thing that changed was the frame and the mind so that I went into it that that wouldn't even be a conversation or that would almost be a ridiculous thing to come up in the first place so as I said for me and my students I tell them look just don't even offer any discount if you've gone out you could pitch clients and you just can't seem to make

it work you need that confidence in that first client fine giving 50% off and that way they have a lower barrier to entry but they also still have some skin in the game so those of you that have gone into the end of this video trust me see if you so so so much time but not going out there offering these free trials that inevitably never really end with any sort of result any sort of progression with your agency as I said it just builds this false feedback loop that you're moving forward when in reality

you're not so as I said this video would have saved you a lot of time now if you want to save even more time with your social media marketing journey there's a link in the description for the updated free training this is a three hour behemoths free training and at the end you're actually going to get an entire cold-call plug-in plate literally everything to say on your cold calls to set appointments to set plans and I even give you a light abridged version of the sales script that we use in the number one agency program

on earth right now agency incubator furthermore once you got that plan you know you have been getting cold feet you're like I don't know how to actually deliver results from no worries whatsoever one saying I think there's a seven-page plug-and-play with video tutorials click by click what to do to deliver results for local businesses using Facebook ads so if you want to go ahead and save even more time for your agency journey the link is in the description go ahead and check that out my name is Xena and gadji I hope you've enjoyed this video

and don't you dare offer another free trial thinking that's moving you forward when it's not hope you've enjoyed and I'll see you guys in the next one [Music]