What is sampling?

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It is no secret that selling products or services is difficult if the brand is just starting out and is little known. It is to be expected that consumers will prefer products that are already known rather than investing in unknown ones.

However, the best way to overcome this barrier has always been to give a taste of the service offered, and even give away a sample of the product for sale. In this way, you show what you have to offer, and you begin to build credibility and trust with potential customers. This is precisely what sampling is .

Meaning of sampling
In the world of marketing, sampling is about offering free samples of products and services to potential customers. A classic example is those food or perfumery stands in shopping malls, which offer samples of sausages, meats, cheeses, sweets or fragrances.

This is extremely attractive to many users, who do not waste time in coming over and trying it out. The trick is that a free sample can easily gain the customer's trust and lead them to immediately purchase or cash app database this product or service. It is an old-fashioned marketing strategy that continues to yield positive results today.

What is sampling for?
It is mainly used to approach the public and show them the brand, product or service. This is intended to convince them to buy or consume, and even to become a regular customer.

For this reason, it is a strategy that is especially used in a launch. Even if the company is new or has been around for a long time, it is very beneficial to offer a sample to potential customers and even to its oldest customers when launching a new product or service on the market.

Thanks to this strategy, bonds of trust can be created with users, so it also serves to generate closeness, familiarity and encourage commitment. After a sampling process, many people become loyal consumers who follow the business for a long time.

Sampling is also useful for testing or measuring the effectiveness and potential of a new product. Giving a sample to customers and receiving their opinions, impressions and comments helps the company confirm whether the service or product is good.

So a free sample is not only useful for the customer but also for the company, since at the same time that it reaches out to its target audience, it is also testing the effectiveness of what it offers.

How sampling works
They say that if you don't show, you don't sell, and this marketing strategy follows this premise. That is the secret of sampling and its great advantage in creating a community of loyal customers.

Sampling guarantees a very attractive approach, since it is free, there is no commitment that makes the client doubt, this benefits the brand because a large part of those who try the samples may end up buying them, and many others may become regular customers.

In addition, many consumers are more distrustful and need strategies like these to be convinced and buy the product or pay for the service.

How to apply sampling to your marketing strategy
The sampling marketing strategy varies depending on the brand, the objectives it pursues and the product it offers, since planning a sampling to promote the brand is not the same as designing a sampling to promote a product or service when the business already has a long and recognized history in the market.

However, in both cases, there are certain factors to take into account that cannot be missing in the sampling strategy. The first of these is that the consumer profile must be very well defined, this allows for the creation of a dissemination and promotion strategy tailored to the client's interests.

On the other hand, knowing this profile helps to select the product or service to be offered as a sample. It must be one that represents the essence of the brand and provides benefits to users, which makes it much more attractive.

The next step once the consumer and product profiles have been defined is to evaluate the cost of promoting the product. This is to verify that the company can cover it and what the probabilities or statistics are for recovering the investment. This step is important as it helps to measure whether or not it is feasible to carry out a sampling strategy.

Finally, the strategy for promoting the product or service is defined, as well as its presentation, whether it will be through social networks, by email or even a video published on the brand's blog or website.

Examples of sampling
A very current example of sampling is streaming platforms that offer a free month of subscription, or online course platforms such as Coursera, which offer some free training to test the value of their services.