The Benefits of Giving Free Samples

The Benefits of Giving Free Samples

As far as marketing and sales tactics go, giving away free samples is one of the most effective measures you can take to boost sales and drive awareness of your product. This is particularly relevant to both the food and drink and health and beauty industries; consumers are more likely to buy your product if they know what they are getting. This is even more the case if you have a brand that people are not that familiar with; you can use the tactic to demonstrate first-hand how effective or tasty your product is.

Here are some of the main benefits of giving away free samples.

Promotional Staff give out Free Samples

Increase Conversion Likelihood

If you give away a free sample, people will be much more likely to buy your product. Say you have a new perfume coming out and you give away free samples with a magazine. Everyone who tries your perfume sample and likes it will be much more likely to purchase a full-sized bottle once their sample ends; they will have got into the habit of using your perfume, and it will therefore be first on their list of perfumes to buy.

Raise Brand Awareness

This is particularly relevant for brands that may have less consumer awareness, or may be up against competition from well-known household names. Imagine that you are a new or niche chocolate bar brand, and your products are being sold in a well-known supermarket or food store.

There may be several popular brands that people usually buy when they want chocolate; therefore, they are likely to pick up that brand without even looking at yours. However, by giving away a free sample, you are instantly putting your brand in front of customers, giving your product an advantage over well-known and previously trusted brands, if people like the taste of your chocolate bar.

Reach Your Target Audience

If you have a niche product for which you want to attract a specific following, you can use free samples to target your desired audience. Say you have a new beauty product aimed at affluent, professional young females; you could use a trade event like London Clothes Show to give away samples and build a following among people likely to attend that event – those most likely to be in-line with your target following.

Create C2C Marketing and Word-of-Mouth

If you can build a loyal and devoted customer base, they will help market your product for you. It’s no secret that one of the main reasons people buy a product is because of recommendations from friends and family. Your loyal customers are likely to share, like and comment on your product via social media, spreading the word to their contacts in the process.

Build a Buzz

Everyone loves a free sample – and by giving something away for free, you are creating excitement and enthusiasm straight away. Samples can be a great way to build a buzz around something new and unique. Imagine you have a new energy drink with exciting new ingredients that can’t be found anywhere else within the drinks market.

You can publicise this fact through your free sampling campaign, using promotional staff to sell the uniqueness of the product, while letting people taste it and judge for themselves.

Promote Special Offers or Campaigns

Free samples can be a great way to raise awareness of a particular campaign or promotion. For example, if your company is about to celebrate its 20th birthday, you can use samples to draw attention to this and create excitement.

Drive Website Traffic and Sign-Ups

Giving out samples can also be a great way to increase website traffic or collect contact details of prospective customers. You can choose to offer your free sample in exchange for an email address, for example, or in return for signing up for a newsletter or liking a page on a social network. These sign-ups can drastically increase your marketing base, helping you to achieve further sales in the future from ongoing communications.

Build Trust in Your Brand

Consumers are more likely to buy from brands they trust, so building a sense of trust among your customers is one of the most basic steps you can take to boost sales. For new brands – or well-established brands bringing in new products – gaining trust can be a long-term process, containing many elements, such as social media engagement, positive press coverage and word-of-mouth.

Free samples given away directly by promotional staff can be a great way to boost trust in a brand or product. What better way to show people how great your product is than by letting them try it for themselves before they hand over any of their own money?

If you have a new product – or are a new brand – getting that first influx of sales can be tricky. So, although it can seem like a large and daunting investment to give away free samples, the return on investment can be significant – and is undoubtedly one of the best ways to increase sales of perishable goods like food, drink and beauty products.

To find out how you can increase your sales through giveaways and using promotional staff, get in touch with us at Breeze People today.