Thinking of executing a product sampling campaign? Great idea, since sampling is a super way of enhancing your brand and acquiring more customers. Clearly, there’s nothing quite like getting something for free, right?
But there’s much more to product sampling than meets the eye. There are different techniques and approaches, some of which are only relevant in certain situations.
So, this article is here to quickly explain the 4 different types of product sampling campaigns that you could try out.
Tactic 1: Event based product sampling
As the name suggests, this strategy revolves around giving away samples of your product at a particular event (either via an agreement with the organisers or by stealth advertising).
As a high profile example of how a consumable product can hook up with an event, think of huge sponsorships and partnerships, such as Wimbledon and Stella Artois.
The trick with event based product sampling is concentrate on relevancy. If you can gate crash an event and give away free samples of a product that the audience is interested in, that’s the path to success.
Tactic 2: Guerrilla product sampling
When you use a creative guerrilla marketing campaign to put a product into the hands of a consumer, it can have an amazing effective.
Marketing should always strive to be memorable; that’s how brand loyalty is created. So when you combine an experience with a freebie, that’s powerful.
The only potential snag with guerrilla product sampling is a lack of control over the audience, which makes connecting with the right profile of customer tricky.
Tactic 3: Supermarket product sampling
At it’s most basic, product sampling is a numbers game. The more people your product meets, the better your chance of clinching sales and growing your business.
There’s not much to dislike about supermarket product sampling, but the only issue is that of budget. Depending on the store, it can cost more than a pretty penny to get permission to land the opportunity.
Tactic 4: Segmented product sampling
Segmented product sampling simply revolves around only delivering your product into the hands of a person that is highly interested in that sort of thing.
The benefit is clear: your product is far more likely to be of valuable to your target audience than that of any old Tom, Dick or Harry. The issue, however, is that such campaigns are often more expensive and harder to execute.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
