Have you seen in your local hyper market where some sales promotion girls offerring the visitors some sample of their promoted products. This traditional marketing is still valid today for ANY promotion including to promote your products or services online.

Use the traditional marketing approach and give away free samples of your product from your web site. After giving away the samples, follow up with an email. Ask the people who received a sample what they thought of it, if they had any problem, and if they any questions. Direct the samplers back to your web site for more information and discounts on purchasing the regular version of the product.

To do the follow up you need an autoresponder account where you integrate your web form in it. The flow is that the visitors see your sales letter or your webpage offering your product and services. In the webpage you include a small box consist of your web form and an enticing message to tell them to subcribe to get your product samples.

I have this experience from one of the most successful internet marketers who offers his paid newsletter subscription by giving one of the newsletter issue. After I subscribed for the free sample of his newsletter, I got some emails asking me to fill the feedback form asking my opinion about the sample I received. He encouraged me to fill the feedback form by giving another issue of his newsletter,of course I will fill the quick feedback form which he has prepared nicely to me with multiple choice of answers for me to pick, and then I got his next sample which confirm his service quality. He then can use the positive feedback as his service testimonial for more credibility to his web site.

Learning from the experience above, in your follow up you should create a form to ask your sample receiver a feedback. Make sure you make the process easier to the receiver by providing them the multiple choice of feedback questions so they don't have to think a lot what to type in your feedback form. Think type or answers you expect from them.

It is easy for products like e-book or software and It is common that the e-book writers offer their first chapter for their prospects. I saw someone recently launching his new e-book by creating a "leaking" chapter to generate pre buying minded visitors before he releases his new e-book to the market. Also to software producers, it is common to offer a demo version of their software to their visitor. The software will have some links back to the producer web site for more repeat ready to buy visitors.

If you have a number of products, you might consider alternating your free samples. Ask if visitors would like to be notified by email when you change your free sample. This gives you permission to email the visitors on regular basis to remind them about the sample.

You also get to update them with new information regarding your site, your products, or your company. This will entice them to visit your site again. Make sure you include your signature file in your email message.

Free samples also provide a great viral marketing opportunity.