what's the term for when you give a credible company your product for free...

pwd

What's the term for when you give a credible company your product for free? The rationale is that you can list them as a customer and get a testimonial in order to gain credibility.

Thanks

Buttercake

Sample? Guinea Pig? Try & Buy? Tester? Freebie?

If you give out freebies, there is no real onus on the receiver to write a glorious review of the product

if you want feedback from a feebie, get them to sign a terms and conditons or attach it to the product or ask them would it be ok to follow up with a review and send them an online survey (lots of free/trial ones out there)

If its a large company you must be prepared to followup by phone or person because emails will be ignored! and make sure you get your feedback, as a lot of large companies will receive freebies and not bother giving any feedback for the product

If you receive good feedback from your survey, contact them and ask can you use their review in your marketing material etc

Once you have their approval(in writing/email) then you are away.

A lot of it is communication, business people are always happy to try out a product and love hearing the sound of their own voice, but you need to follow them because they wont do the work!

good luck

StupidLikeAFox

If your looking for a good online survey site thats free i recommend esurveyspro.com

I checked out a few for doin my college research and these seemed to be the best on offer, the link in my signature has the survey in it, try it out a see how ya get on!

pwd

thanks for the responses.

There was a particular term used for the approach I described in the initial post, by a guy who'll assess the project in a short while. It was more buzz-wordy than the terms listed above I think.

shoutman

I've been using www.surveygizmo.com for the survey i'm running (can see it in my sig).

It's free up to 250 responses and after that its a fairly small charge, very well laid out engine on the site etc.

pwd

thanks

um

I'm not looking for a survey tool at the moment. Probably will do one at some point. I made a lot of online questionnaires in my last job, so I'd probably just make it myself.

What I'm looking for is the term for what I described in the OP

ontour2

beta customer / early adopter / charter customer ?

flash harry

pwd wrote: »

thanks

um

I'm not looking for a survey tool at the moment. Probably will do one at some point. I made a lot of online questionnaires in my last job, so I'd probably just make it myself.

What I'm looking for is the term for what I described in the OP

hi pwd

can I recommend surveymonkey mainly because clearly you are not looking for surveys and people keep giving you advise on them!!!!

But to answer your question, some people would consider what you are talking about an "advocate" customer but this implies they are going to say nice stuff about it.

pwd

Thanks. Charter customer might have been the term he used...seems to be a suitable term anyway.

Found an article about the importance of them here, which seems sensible:

http://www.svproduct.com/charter-customer-programs/