Intelligent Product Sampling
Almost everything you need to know about product sampling
Product sampling is often used by companies wishing to trial a new product development (NPD). It may seem like a deceptively simple form of marketing. You simply put your product in front of your target audience, and let it do the hard work for you. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s an approach without subtlety. Doing your product sampling in an intelligent way can bring incremental improvement to your results, meaning that you don’t only showcase the product, but showcase the brand, how to use it, and even get people to talk about it for you.
How can you make product sampling campaigns more effective?
Some of the areas where it’s most common to find product sampling campaigns falling short include:
- A lack of appreciation for context: where the sampling occurs is as important as how you deliver it creatively. It’s important they see your product in the best, most relevant, light.
- A lack of creative impact: the way you deliver a sampling experience primes your potential customers for what comes next. It’s important you use a strong creative concept to both frame the product in an exciting way, and also to attract people over to your activity.
- A lack of brand integration: you want to ensure your activity gels with the wider image of the brand. Are you doing other marketing activity elsewhere? If so it makes sense to echo this in your product sampling so you achieve greater familiarity.
- A lack of efficiency: although creativity is important, you don’t want to do something that might compromise your reach. Is the activity easy to move around and work with? You don’t have to do something big and complicated to be impactful.
What is intelligent product sampling?
Intelligent product sampling is an approach to sampling where you do everything in your power to ensure the product experience moment is as impactful as possible.
This means thinking strategically about when and where you deliver the sample – even if necessary creating scenarios where the sample will be consumed later on, without the brand even being present.
It also means thinking carefully about the people you get to represent you – choosing ambassadors with the personality and passion to immediately click with your audience, so they’ll be as open as possible to your idea.
It means bringing compelling but agile creative thinking to your product sampling – doing something that will pique people’s interest and draw them over, increasing your reach and the power of what you’re presenting.
And it means thinking about the big picture of your impact – how can you make waves beyond that initial sampling moment, and, of course, how can you measure it.
For too long product sampling has been seen by many brands as a bolt-on activity, or worse something they do in a reactive way when they have the budget or stock. Intelligent product sampling rejects that view, treating it as carefully as any other part of an integrated marketing plan.
Product sampling: an FAQ for brand managers
Sampling can be reactive and therefore exist happily as a standalone campaign. Assets from other media can be deployed to appear larger scale and convey a ‘matching luggage’ approach.
The product, audience and consumption occasion will determine the campaign structure and ultimately the investment and cost per sample.
A tactical activity for example that requires limited engagement and explanation of the product, relies on minimal sampling ‘kit’ and can be distributed at high volume in quick succession, would result in a lower cps than an activity that sits higher on the engagement and interaction scale.
Sense has a dedicated business unit, Real People, responsible for providing skill and value matched brand ambassadors to execute product sampling campaigns. They are experienced in reacting to consumer needs, location logistics and sampling volume demands. We actively encourage client brand teams to ‘go back to the floor’ and participate in sampling campaigns to get close to their customers.
Each campaign is unique and multiple factors will affect the shape of the activity. We use proprietary location and demographic tools to research the best locations for the brand and product.
Product sampling is a unique way to engage face to face with potential customers, and sharing this experience with others goes hand in hand. In addition to organic shares across social channels by recipients, social mechanics can be added to a campaign structure to encourage further reach.