In Part I, I shared why in my experience, free trials double your workload (and who wants that!)
Here is Reason #2 Why I Don’t Love Free Trials.
Free trials = lots of communication that slows you down.
There are different ways to set up the roads people travel into your studio.
→ They could do a free trial
→ They could do a paid trial
→ They could enrol on a monthly retainer
→ They could receive an invoice to be paid at some stage in the term.
All of these strategies work, but they certainly have pro’s and cons.
Let’s say you have a student who is quite hesitant, asking 50,000 questions about your studio and coming in for a trial.
You email back and forth, trying to offer them what they are looking for.
Then, sometimes they come in for the free class, but other times they ghost you!
It’s a lot of investment in your team’s time to be handling these enquiries – and you’ve still no guarantee you’re going to receive a dime from them!
The dream is that we set up your marketing so that people just enrol.
Yep, they see an ad, visit your website and it’s so damn compelling that they just enrol on the spot.
No back and forth.
No 50,000 questions.
The value you offer is clear.
The quality of what you deliver is not being questioned.
They don’t have questions, because all the answers are there.
My clients who have pivoted to this strategy are astounded that their inboxes are so much lighter now that we don’t have all the enquiry questions flooding in every day.
It’s possible to structure your enrollment strategy so that people simply enrol automatically via the website without ever coming in for a trial – or emailing you to ask a question.
Humans are funny.
When you present a really clear, compelling instruction, they will follow quite happily.
You can lead them to come in for a trial, or you can lead them to enrol.
People will do what you lead them to do.
There are few things as sweet for a studio owner than a new enrollment entering their credit card information into their studio management system without any handholding or email back and forth.
And imagine what your life could look like where this is the norm.
Marketing campaign → enrol directly into studio → pay for first month → attend first class.
This is the flow we’re seeking. It can be entirely automated. It’s a JOY!
Here’s the thing, you can always have the free trial up your sleeve as a downsell.
If someone really has hesitation about enrolling straight away, you can always invite them in for a trial, no worries.
But a trial is the exception, not the highway into your studio.
There are other ways to get around this, which I share more about in a training I did recently.
If you’d like, you can access the replay here (the bit about Free Trials starts at the 28 minute mark)
Click here to learn more about the pitfalls of Free Trials >>
Keep an eye out for Part III of why I don’t love free trials – it’s a biggie.
