It won’t surprise you to hear that we at Sampl are passionate about the power of product sampling. The benefits of getting your product into the hands of the right people can be felt across many areas of your business. From the Product Team getting actionable consumer feedback, to the Marketing Team delivering an enhanced sales conversion rate. There are, however, some common pitfalls that you can avoid in order to make the best of your sampling campaign. These are…
Sharing the campaign to your website
It may sound like a good idea to share a sampling campaign to your website, in fact it’s usually not. The main downfall of this is that you open the campaign to anybody who has internet access, which inevitably means you lose control. Ideally you want to only offer samples to the right audience, without too many being allocated to people who already know and use your product – or people that simply won’t use your product either. Allocating too many samples to these cohorts will negatively impact the campaign ROI. To get the best out of your campaign, keep it limited and exclusive.
Freebie hunters
One of the biggest downfalls of any sampling campaign is having it posted to freebie websites or blogs. Many “freebie hunters” and “compers” treat doing so as a sport – seeing who can get the most free items. Within these groups, they’ll often share pictures of the heaps of items they’ve received in recent weeks. Whilst some of these people do go on to leave reviews and engage with content, you have less control over the audience you’re reaching and there’s always a big question mark over their motives for requesting samples. Here at Sampl we’ve developed our technology to help ensure that your samples only go to the right people.
Targeting the wrong audience
It’s super important to keep your targeting fairly narrow and ensure it’s the right demographic. With more broad targeting you’ll be more likely to receive requests from people outside or on the fringes of your target audience. Whilst the CPL (Cost Per Lead) will be lower, so will the longer term benefit. Instead, be stricter with your targeting. It’ll likely lead to a higher CPL, but you’ll see higher engagement. Both with immediate metrics related to your campaign, but also beyond as you drive repeat purchases through your CRM program.
Get the timing right
If you’re planning to tie your sampling campaign into a public holiday, you need to make sure you get the timings right. It’s one thing getting the product into the hands of consumers in time for that holiday, but have you considered how that fits into the length of your customer journey? For example, if you’re looking to sample in time for Christmas, December is not the time to begin. Your consumer will likely have been making purchasing decisions from way back in October. If that is the case, you’ll need to have begun your sampling campaign as early as August. Make sure you’re factoring your customer’s journey into the timings of your sampling campaign.
Get in touch today on +44 (0) 20 3974 7458 or sayhello@samplmarketing.com and we at Sampl. can support you in making the best of your sampling campaigns, or follow us on LinkedIn for more inspiration.
