Are free trial lessons effective at attracting new clients?

That’s an interesting and not-so-easy question. Free trial lessons are usually an effective strategy to attract new clients for an online tutoring business, especially at the beginning, but they also have downsides. Provided that you give a good and convincing lesson and you do some careful screening of your clients before the lesson, a free trial lesson will allow you to attract clients who are sceptical about online tuition and clients who are not familiar with and afraid of making online payments to a stranger. On the downside, offering a free trial lesson will make you more vulnerable to time wasters and students who just want to get away with a free lessons. That will happen sometimes even with a careful screening of your clients before offering the free lesson and is definitely a major problem especially if the tutor is working non-locally and internationally.

Also, another problem related with offering a free trial lesson is that a free lesson could be perceived as a weakness and a lack of clients for the business. A tutor with a solidly booked schedule is not expected to offer free lessons, so some prospective clients may be sceptical if you offer them a free lesson. Instead of offering a free lesson you can direct the clients, especially those who are sceptical about your business, to some free lesson you made so that they can assess your teaching style before possibly hiring you.

As for my business, I have offered a free trial lesson at the beginning of my online tutoring journey and that worked very well for a while, until a couple of student took advantage of it; since then after weighing up the pros and cons of offering a free trial, I am not offering it anymore, I offer a discounted trial lesson instead; that works wonders as a deterrent against time-wasters and students who are not serious about tuition. In general, serious clients have no problem with paying for a discounted lesson and you may be surprised that some clients who really value your services would rather pay the full rate instead of the discounted one as a sign of appreciation for the service you provide.

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