Samples to sales: Five crucial rules to master product sampling in a digital age

Chris Warren

Explains why many brands have abandoned product sampling as a way to engage potential new customers and gives five rules as to what marketers need to do to master it.

Sherry Orel, CEO of New York City-based Brand Connections, gets regular reminders about the downside of product sampling. On walks through Times Square, she will see trash cans filled with small containers of yogurt, shampoo, or whatever sample was being handed out that day. This helps to explain why many brands have abandoned sampling as a way to engage potential new customers.

"Product sampling is the most expensive cost-per-customer-acquired thing to do," says Orel, whose agency has spearheaded such initiatives for BIC and Garnier, a cosmetics brand of parent company L'Oreal. "When it's done well, it is very profitable, but...

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