“Try before you buy.” What could be more enticing? Everybody loves to get something for free. This is product sampling at its best.
When you receive a sample of something you’re not familiar with, not only is there no financial risk; there’s also the anticipation of discovering something you’d like to taste, use, or experience again. There is no better way to get people to try a product than to give it to them for free and there is an art to giving away products so that you get a good return on your investment.
Today we’ll look at some of the myths surrounding product sampling and give you some useful hints and tips to help you execute the perfect campaign:
Myth: Product sampling is cheap
It can be, but it depends on your brand value in the market place. If you have a well established brand, you can get away with low engagement and low cost product sampling; the reason being that you’ve done the hard work and people already know about your brand. In this instance, a highly targeted sampling campaign can be used to reinforce your brand message and remind people why they should keep using you.
However, if your brand is new, you will need to invest more in product sampling. You will need to spend time and money engaging with your target market and nurturing them to become advocates, to maximise your longer term results.
Myth: Product sampling gives me instant advocates
The sad truth is that lots of brands don’t know if they get advocates from their sampling campaigns, as they do not follow up with new contacts or track their movements.
If you want to know how successful your product sampling campaign has been, you need to stay in touch with your customers – use an application that enables you to instantly connect with them and reward them for sharing their feedback and/or photos with you and their wider social network.
Myth: Product sampling is less important than digital marketing
No it isn’t! In our experience, the strongest and most successful marketing strategies incorporate both offline and online activations. Offline marketing can often boost online activity as people buy into people, but the success of this depends on the strategy you employ and how your offline activity gets linked back to your website or social media networks.
If you want to find out how our experienced team of marketers can help you activate a campaign or give you some advise on the best methods for activation, please do get in touch on 0207 503 0442 or email info@hotcow.co.uk.
