Thoughts on giving free trial to consumers to push request to business to purchase account?

One of the models I'm working on is B2B2C and I kind of hate myself for using that terminology just now. But in reality what I'm doing is creating a B2B tool that is for community development (if you were a co-working space, apartment complex, HR department at a good sized company etc...) that will ultimately be used by consumers within their community. So what I'm thinking is adding a free trial for consumers at targeted locations in order to get them to request an account be purchased by their employer/space/community. The thought process behind this is I get to see if the end user actually likes the service, have an example of happy community users when I go into the sale, and its theoretically easier to convince the account purchaser of the validity of the concept. It also improves my business from the user acquisition perspective and it's an additional area of brand exposure. Anyone have any experience with this approach?