Letting Your Customers Try Your Product Before They Buy Is The Best Marketing You Could Ever Do. Here’s Why

The internet is overflowing with ads. Whatever you’re selling, there will always be a competitor out there.

There will always be other options for your customers.

So how do you stand out from the crowd? What are you going to do to show your customers that you’re different?

At ThirdLove, we had a radical idea. We called it Try Before You Buy. Now, it seems like the most natural thing in the world. But at the time, we were gambling everything on a marketing tactic that had no guarantee.

Looking back, it was the best decision we ever made.

The Road To Try Before You Buy

It began with a meeting.

This wasn’t just our weekly brainstorm. It wasn’t a meeting to think about how we could tweak our marketing strategy. This was all hands on deck. We had everyone sitting around the table, searching for something different. Drastically different.

The status quo wasn’t working, and while I wouldn’t say we were desperate, we were getting pretty close.

We’d used our seed money by that point. We’d spent two years building our product, getting a manufacturing partner, figuring out high quality production. It wasn’t easy, but we felt that we had a really great product for women. So why weren’t they buying it?

We had started off with some standard “10% off your first bra” ads. Women weren’t biting. We knew we had to stand out in some way.

If we didn’t figure it out in the next few months, none of us would be at that table the following year.

So we decided to take a risk and start our “Try Before You Buy” program. Women could order a bra, take the tags off, and wear it for thirty days. If they didn’t like it, they could send it back and we’d donate it.

Now, that sounds risky, but remember, we had faith in our product. We had put in two years of hard work, and we were sure that if women could try the product, they’d love it. We just needed to get them over that hump to say, “Okay, I’ll buy a $60.00 bra from this company that I don’t really know.”

And it worked. In all honesty, it probably saved the company.

Why It Works

Why? Well, like I said, we knew we had a great product.

But here’s the thing about online shopping — as convenient as it is, there’s a downside. The customer can’t touch the product. They can’t feel it. They don’t know that it will look good in the mirror or fit the way they expect it to. Nearly everyone has bought something online, tried it on, looked in the mirror, and just thought, “No.”

The average online shopper knows this. That’s why it’s so hard to get them to bite on something new. Every ad says, “this will be your new favorite bra, your go-to jacket, your most comfortable shoes.” That’s not enough to sway someone who’s been let down before.

Letting them try it before they buy it is the best way to get past that hang-up. Maybe the only way.

It Can Transform Your Business

I was down in Marfa, Texas a while back. It’s a little artist community, and while it’s a popular travel destination, it’s only home to about 1,000 people — pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

I was at the coffee bar chatting with the barista for a few minutes. It was about 95 degrees out, so I just had on a tank top, and my bra strap was showing. Of course, I was wearing one of our bras — the 24/7 bra.

As I went to leave with the coffee, the barista leaned over the bar and said, “I think you have on the 24/7 bra. I know this is so random, but aren’t they the most comfortable bras? I have one, and I love it.”

It was such an impactful moment for me. Here I was, in the middle of nowhere, and this woman, who had actually tried ThirdLove through our Try Before You Buy program, was telling me that she loved our bras. She told me that not only is she a barista, but she bakes bread on the side. She’s married to a photographer and she has two little kids. She’s a busy woman.

What she told me was that the bra actually made her daily life better because it was so comfortable, because it fit so well. And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. It isn’t about making money. It’s about making women happy and making them comfortable.

I hear stories like hers all the time now. And I don’t think I’d be hearing them if we hadn’t decided on the Try Before You Buy program.