Product sampling is a powerful marketing strategy that can help businesses increase brand awareness, generate interest, and ultimately drive sales. However, with so many businesses using product sampling as a marketing tool, it can be challenging to create a sampling strategy that is truly innovative, memorable and engaging.

The Insider Program at Sephora offers members access to promotions, extra perks, promotions and discounts. The product sampling strategy of the Beauty Insider program is encouraging customers to try out different products and discover new favourites.

Part of this product sampling strategy is known as insert sampling as customers can get free gifts with their online purchases when Sephora partner up with one of their e-commerce brands. Insert sampling involves giving samples with purchases to encourage existing customers, i.

an invested market, to test other products and increase the range of purchases in the future. Results indicated that giving little perks like this, once a year, were enough to keep customers emotionally invested in the brand and more likely to make future purchases.

Partnering with Walmart, Glade launched the Scent by Glade campaign to target online shoppers. com website during the first week and demonstrates how impactful product packaging can increase brand awareness and drive sales.

To enter, participants must locate a Cadbury Secret Santa Postal Service digital or static poster in the UK and scan the QR code when it is available. Alternatively they could pay for a chocolate bar online to personalise and send to the intended recipient.

The campaign is a fun and festive way to raise brand awareness, spread holiday cheer and share the love of chocolate. It is reported that the Cadbury Secret Santa campaign contributed to a 1.

Nike capitalised on heroes like Williams using their brand, to inspire those who look up to them to encourage them to follow in their footsteps, and to follow their own crazy dreams.

Tip: How can you use Social Proof in your brand to inspire others to take action, where the knock-on effect is to use your product to get there? Christy Laurence is the multi-award-winning Founder of Plann, an app she created after watching hugely talented people around the world give up on making an income from their passion due to lack of marketing help.

She has a strong pun game and loves a good chat, connect with her directly at christyladylaurence. Your FREE January Content Planner. The Ultimate Guide To Mastering TikTok And Reels. The Speedy Social Media Cheatsheet: Plan A Week Of Posts In 20 Minutes.

The Ultimate Strategy Guide: Reverse Engineer Your Way To Social Media Success. Done-For-You Content: Engaging Instagram Captions You Can Start Using Right Now! Skip to content Demo. Plann Tour. Content Planner. Product Tagging. Hashtag Manager. Caption Templates. Free Stock Libraries.

Content Themes. All-in-One Social Media Manager. Media Collections. Photo Editing Suite. EasyLink Link-in-bio. AI Caption Generator. Instagram Scheduling. Pinterest Scheduling. Facebook Scheduling.

TikTok Scheduling. LinkedIn Scheduling. Grow Your Audience. What to Post on Socials? Create Social Media Strategy. Design Trending Content.

Fully Integrated Link-in-Bio. Instagram Scheduling Get in touch with our support team to see how we can build a Plann for you. Learn Social Media. Level Up Your Social Media Skills Free social media training that will help you grow your business, faster.

Glade wanted more people to try out its home air freshener. But as online shopping becomes more popular, fewer customers are visiting physical stores to get free samples or watch product demonstrations.

To solve this problem, they enlisted the help of Walmart for a unique product sampling campaign. Glade took the packing pillows used to protect products during home deliveries and filled them with their air freshener.

So, as people unpacked their Walmart purchases and popped their pillows, the scent of Glade's spring fragrance wafted through the air. They also printed a QR code on the packaging that people could scan to buy Glade's products directly.

Ogilvy Chicago, the ad agency behind the campaign, claimed that Glade home fragrances had an 83 percent boost in sales on Walmart. com thanks to this innovative product sampling idea.

Beauty Insider, the wildly popular reward program from Sephora , includes product sampling as an integral part and major benefit of its strategy.

The cosmetics company is well-known for providing free product samples with each online order. There are a few reasons why this is a great tactic.

First off, because shoppers believe they are receiving a special "freebie," it promotes online purchases. Additionally, loyal customers enjoy the feeling of receiving rewards for their patronage and being appreciated by the brand. Finally, because the sales happen online and customers can select their own samples, Sephora is able to monitor whether or not those customers go on to purchase the product in their subsequent online shopping session.

If you're wondering how product sampling has worked for Sephora, know that there are 17 million participants in the Sephora reward program in North America alone, and they account for 80 percent of the company's revenue. In , Cheerios saw a chance to take advantage of Amazon's e-commerce algorithms to potentially market its product to over million Amazon Prime members in the US.

Cheerios used product sampling as part of its strategy to capitalize on Amazon Prime Day 16 - 17 June and position Honey Nut Cheerios as Alexa's cereal of choice for Amazon customers. The advantages were two-fold for Cheerios.

In addition to promoting the brand to new customers with a free sample, this transaction automatically created a Cheerios shopping history for millions of Amazon Prime shoppers.

This gave the product a huge boost in Amazon's recommendation algorithm and moved Honey Nut Cheerios to number one in the cereal category and even the number one grocery item on Prime Day. One of the biggest and best-known brewing companies in the world, Anheuser-Busch produces a wide range of popular alcoholic drinks, including Michelob, Bud Light, and Budweiser.

In , when the company launched its hard seltzer brand, Bud Light Seltzer, its existing in-store sampling programs had been discontinued due to the COVID pandemic. As an alternative, they collaborated with a digital product sampling platform and developed a digital sampling campaign to encourage first purchases, track repeat purchases, create user-generated content, and even spread word of mouth.

Ways to Offer Free Samples · Go to Catalog → Products in your Ecwid admin panel and click +Add New Product. · Enter the name, description, and other product Free sample marketing is one way you can draw in customers. By giving away free samples of your products or services, people can get a taste Yves Roches, Sephora, Aesop and many other brands have come up with a good beauty products sampling idea. They give away free samples every time

Video

Free Sample Campaigns - There are tons of sampling 'communities' and 'freebie clubs' that people join often with the express wish of receiving lots of free samples Ways to Offer Free Samples · Go to Catalog → Products in your Ecwid admin panel and click +Add New Product. · Enter the name, description, and other product Free sample marketing is one way you can draw in customers. By giving away free samples of your products or services, people can get a taste Yves Roches, Sephora, Aesop and many other brands have come up with a good beauty products sampling idea. They give away free samples every time

If you plan to offer free samples at a local store, give the address of the establishment and the hours the samples will be given away. Some news releases can be sent to blogs; send the release via email to blogs that deal with businesses.

If you sell products for pets, for example, email your news release to the most popular pet blogs to encourage them to mention your free sample offer in one of their postings.

Nancy Wagner is a marketing strategist and speaker who started writing in She writes business plans for startups and established companies and teaches marketing and promotional tactics at local workshops.

She holds a B. from Eastern Illinois University. By Nancy Wagner. Ways to Promote Pottery How to Write the Best Newsletter for Retail Sales Keys to Marketing a Skin Care Line How to Get a Tumblr Link to a Specific Post How to Increase Magazine Sales.

Website and Social Media No matter what you sell, whether perfume, cleaning products or downloadable templates, mention the product on your website in bold headlines.

Get Listed Hundreds of websites provide links to companies that offer free samples, including FreeSamples. Print Look for suitable print publications that appeal to your target market, and run an ad that mentions the free sample.

Free Press Send a news release to pertinent print and online publications about your free sample offer. References FreeSamples. org: Contact Us Time: The Power of Freebies, Why Companies Pay to Give Free Samples to Supermarket Customers.

Making a memorable experience for your target audience makes them more likely to choose your product over all other options available in the market. That is because they leave your event with a positive feeling and memory and it sticks with them unconsciously. Let's be honest: everybody thinks they're special.

Many brands use this simple fact to touch the emotions of their consumers and make a memorable image in their head. Yves Roches , for example, gives a gift to its customers on their birthday.

They can order it online or pick it up from any shop. Yves Roches, Sephora , Aesop and many other brands have come up with a good beauty products sampling idea. They give away free samples every time their customers make a purchase.

This way they're sure the freebies are delivered to the right destination at the least possible cost. Send your samples directly where there's a massive number of your consumers gathered together.

It can be a kindergarten if your product is crayon or colored pencils. They get to use your product almost at the same time and share their experience together. This method can be used for any kind of product: fashion, beauty, edibles, e-commerce products, and whatnot.

Let's say you're introducing a new sauce to the market. You can make an interactive and innovative experience by giving away how-to guides or recipes on how to use the new sauce. It is a secure way to make a good first impression on the consumers with the new product.

The same method can be applied to beauty products. If you're making a new facial mask, add a brief guide and explain how it's going to work best for your consumers.

Also read: Product Sampling Safe Haven: Contactless Product Sampling. Send a tiny sample of your new perfume to anyone who buys clothes from a specific brand.

Send a pack of cheese to anyone who orders at an Italian restaurant in a specific area. There's no limit to how creative you can be. Just think of the best partner in your market and make a win-win deal.

On the other side of the deal, the consumers will surely be happy to get a free surprise pack, no matter how small it's going to be. It must be hard to stand out in a supermarket and attract attention where there are many brands giving away free samples, isn't it?

Lay's came up with an unforgettable idea to solve this problem. They put Lay's machines, which look like regular vending machines, in the supermarkets. The consumers were given free potatoes and they were supposed to put it in the machine to make it work, like you give change or cash to the regular vending machines.