trial

Formal hearing of a civil or criminal case before a competent court for examination of evidence and determination of legal claims leading to a judgment through adversary system. All trials (except in-camera ones) must be held in public.

Young companies have to get the word out, but they also can go broke doing it. A decade ago, America Online spent so much money flooding the planet with free trial software that it tried to mask the bleeding by capitalizing those expenses on its balance sheet. (Regulators later nixed that accounting treatment, wiping out millions in accounting profits.) What percentage of sales should go toward marketing? As with sales, there is no one rule of thumb.