While overall convenience of the online shopping experience is indisputable, there are many consumer products/categories that do not easily fit into this model. They need a personal, face-to face, high touch approach of consumer experience marketing and in store sampling and tasting. Here are just a few examples:

• Shoes, and apparel to lesser extent, are not manufactured to a high level of standards which mean that the same model shoe of the same size may not fit consumers' feet adequately. Returning them for exchange work once or twice, but if you need shoes you will likely visit a neighborhood store specializing in comfort footwear. Research shows that in fact online journeys tend to be longer than in-store.

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• Groceries, particularly new products - everybody read that the supermarket revenues and home deliveries have dramatically increased during the covid-19 scare, but that happened mostly in an explosion of demand for health care related goods and staple, well known products.
  
  

It is notoriously difficult to measure the impact of a brand’s marketing efforts – particularly when it comes to offline advertising. Methods for assessing the ROI of packaging design, billboards, pamphlets, TV advertisements and other traditional offline marketing tactics extremely vague.

This can lend a hand in explaining why the pioneers of the online digital marketing industry, such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook, have seen such explosive growth. After all, the digital funnel analysis can easily provide you with important marketing metrics such as how much reach your advertising has, customer attribution, and cost of customer acquisition, while most brick and mortar marketing efforts cannot.

So the question is: how do you fight this seemingly uphill battle to measure the monetary value of building brand awareness? 

In-Store Demo Campaigns

Most people undervalue a long-term impact of In store Demo Campaign, because they do not have a methodology to measure the holistic impact of their event. In other words, ROI is measured only by the amount of product sales during the demo instead of the “big-picture” impact.

While demo sales are certainly an important metric, and are fairly easy to acquire using demo reports and/or POS data in stores, it does not tell a complete story.

The reality is, with proper analytics in place, in-store demo campaigns can provide you with complete visibility into the ROI for every dollar that is invested. 

Economic Valuation of Brand Building

When you ask CPG brand builders why they invest time and money into conducting demo campaigns, you will hear a combination of the following responses:

• We want to increase our brand awareness
• We want to show our support to retailers
• We want to accelerate velocity of our product inventory

All of the above are very worthy goals, so how would you know if you achieved them or not without assigning economic valuations to them? 

Economic valuation of the first two goals are reasonably well represented by sales receipts achieved during the demo event and additional sales uplift during 3-4 weeks immediately following the event. The only sources of such data can be the store POS or the distributor sales order records. But how does one measure the economic value of brand awareness?
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A brand is the way a company, organization, or individual is perceived by those who experience it, and growing brand awareness means getting as many people to experience your product or service as possible. 

The economic value of brand awareness can be calculated adopting the methods that are commonly used by digital marketers. One of the most effective promotional channels for building brand awareness is internet banner ads. Their effectiveness can be attributed to the powerful algorithms which serve ads using factors such as keywords, demographics, location, and remarketing in order to promote your brand and generate awareness in a very relevant way.

However, there are some big criticisms of online advertising especially around rising data privacy concerns. Ads can be “creepy” in the way they use demographic data and follow a person around the internet.

One may argue that an in-store demo is comparable to running “cold” online advertising (targeting an audience that has not interacted with your company). The goal of each is essentially the same: capture a moment of a potential customer’s attention in order to boost brand awareness. 

On the other hand though, the value of tasting a product, interacting with a product, and having direct communication with a brand ambassador, or is a more authentic and valuable interaction than clicking on an advertisement would be. In addition, a consumer may feel more open connecting with a brand in an offline environment, where they are not concerned about their online privacy.

In Conclusion

The point is not to argue whether in-store demos are better or worse than online advertising, as the success of different marketing channels can depend heavily on your specific product or service. 

Rather, the point is that ROI of in-store demos are often substantially undervalued when, in fact, they should be seen as a valuable offline method of brand awareness building, comparable to online advertising. Therefore, similar methods should be used analyzing the holistic, “big-picture” ROI of an in-store demo, versus simply focusing on the low hanging fruit metrics, such as day sales.

If you’re curious to learn more about getting better analytics from your in-store demos, you can find a free copy of Demo ROI Calculator template by clicking on this link.
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 Some brands will only pay for demos (in store sampling) because the retailers require them to support the "exposure" of their products. Yet many of today’s well recognized brands achieved spectacular results in a very short time by using the leverage of field marketing. Their example shows that investment into smart field marketing/experiential marketing strategy can produce return by far higher than other forms of advertising.

Introduction of In Store Sampling

Brands are always looking for ways to get closer to consumers, especially in this digital era. With the fragmented media landscape, many are turning to “shopper marketing” - delivering messages to consumers when they are in shopping mode and receptive to such content. In-store sampling is among the most effective vehicles to drive consumers towards trial and purchase.
Whilst the path of purchase can vary for different products, consumer packaged goods generally enjoy a shorter conversion path (unlike buying big ticket or discretionary items where the buyer journey may take multiple turns). That means there is a greater chance for field marketing tactics such as product sampling to influence consumer behaviour.

Product sampling effectiveness

When the sampling marketing strategy is considered as part of an overarching marketing strategy, it can deliver great results both directly and indirectly.

Direct benefits

Many studies have proven that in-store sampling produces both an immediate and long-term lift in product sales. There is even a snowball effect in sales if repeated sampling events are organized for a single product. In addition, in-store sampling drives trial of the new product, with a well-established track record of boosting sales of new product launches.
Why is it so effective? As rational as humans think they are, we are still driven by our senses. Hence, one of the key purchase decision factors is the ability to sample the product or see a demonstration, with 83% of respondents agreeing.
Sampling also taps into the impulsivity of shoppers, with nearly 74% of respondents observed to make impulse purchases of the product being sampled. The physical proximity can make forgotten cravings more salient.

Another psychological factor is “reciprocity.” When you are given something, you are more likely to reciprocate. Especially in a high-traffic store, shoppers with a “heightened awareness of the presence of others at the sampling station may feel a level of social pressure to make a post-sample purchase.”

Indirect benefits

If brand awareness is your goal, product sampling can also be a great vehicle to assist your other marketing channels. Executed well, the in-store sampling experience can generate positive word of mouth - the most persuasive source of information for consumers.
Another indirect benefit is that running in-store demos can increase total category sales, not just sales for the sampled product.

 Devising an effective sampling marketing strategy 

As with any business operation, you need a clear strategy for the use of in-store sampling for brand/product activation. An important but often overlooked fact is you need to firstly know what success looks like. By having the right measurements and goals in place, you can work backwards to lay out a plan of attack.

So what are those metrics?

1. Traffic engagement - what percent of passing shoppers stop to taste the product
2. Product engagement - how much time a shopper spend by the demo station
3. T2P Conversion Rate© - what percent of shoppers who taste the product end up purchasing

If your sampling marketing strategy is focused on market test of a new product, review and analysis of captured shoppers comments, may prove the most valuable part of the exercise as they allow to tune your new product characteristics and messaging in sync with expected customer experience. 

Considering the cost-benefit equation, a research paper in the Journal of Retailing advises: “If the incremental cost of a sampling event exceeds 15 times the unit price of the product, the event ceases to be profitable.”

The next step is to then work out a detailed plan by considering the following factors: place, people and process.

Place

As the usual adage goes “location location location”, we can’t emphasize the importance of choosing the right store and right area within the store to run product sampling enough.

Essentially there are two factors: Store traffic and shopper demographics, plus other practical considerations.

And a number of questions for brands to consider:

• Are low-traffic stores worth it? What if they provide a highly targeted audience that is likely to convert?
• Are high-traffic stores always good? What if competitors are also known to be frequently running demos there?
• Does the sampled product match the store’s clientele, e.g. value-seeking vs. quality-seeking?
• Is the physical environment of the store conducive to sampling, e.g. aisle not too narrow, music not too loud etc.?

People

To avoid the trap of “old school demos”, hire brand ambassadors (BA) that are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the product. Obviously, skimping on this by using minimum-wage BA would yield minimal return.

On the other hand, properly trained BA can effectively convey the product and brand image. This helps in influencing shoppers’ perception of the promoted brands positively.

Process

Running smooth in-store demo campaigns requires coordinating several factors: product inventory, store’s timetable and BA’s availability. The conventional way which involves multiple rounds of calls to different people generates inefficiency and dramatically lowers the ROI of in-store sampling.

Thankfully, there is a better way through using software. The simplicity of demo scheduling software implementation and ease of adoption makes the tool an attractive option. Smart technology enables a smart coordination, which combines lower management overhead with market intelligence and empowers quality BA to do their job.

Conclusion

Like other marketing strategies, in-store sampling is not a set-and-forget thing. Continuously refining the plan based on analytics and data will help brands get the most out of it.

FAQs

Q: How do I keep quality Brand Ambassadors?

A: Reduce their friction and frustration by giving them the ability to self-register availability and certainty of scheduled slots, as well as on-time payments.

Q: Do I need to hire a dedicated demo coordinator?

A: No. You can reduce overhead by deploying smart tools that allow brands to schedule and manage up to 400-500 demos/month

Q: Why aren’t a lot of brands deploying the sampling marketing strategy?

A: Many still think in-store demos are expensive and a waste of time. However, with proper planning and enabling tools, it can help brands build better relationships with stores, BA and ultimately, shoppers.

Q: Can I organize effective demos without hiring in-store sampling companies?

A: Yes. If you’re confident in recruiting BA or already have a database/relationship with promotional staffing agencies, the rest can be effectively handled by using technology to minimize cost.
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Want to see what smart demo scheduling technology can do for your CPG brand? Request a free demo here.