The benefits of sampling an NPD vs a hero product

A question we’re sometimes asked when speaking to clients is which product we think they should use for their sampling campaign. An NPD vs hero product? To understand which product to sample, you first need to understand how the benefits of each can support your business. Our experts are on hand to support you through this process and help you choose which is right for you. In the meantime, here are the benefits of sampling an NPD vs a hero product…

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Generating new reviews

According to PowerReviews,?99.9% of consumers consult reviews when shopping online?so it’s of vital importance that your NPD has good quality reviews – even if the product has only just gone live. Reviews play a huge role in consumer trust and shoppers who visit a page with 1-10 reviews are?52.2% more likely to convert?than those who visit pages without any reviews. Digital sampling campaigns are a great way to generate reviews at scale. Once generated, they can be integrated directly into your review platform and those of your retail partners.

For your hero product(s), while you may have existing reviews, how recent are they??86% of shoppers feel that review recency is important?when considering a product or brand they haven’t purchased before. If your reviews aren’t recent, this could be impacting your product’s conversion. Campaigns with Sampl can be used to generate new high quality reviews to refresh what you have already. These can then be uploaded to your D2C or syndicated across your retail partners.

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Supporting sales

To rely less on paid marketing, it’s important to grow product awareness – particularly for an NPD. Sampling is a great way to grow product awareness because it allows the consumer to experience the product before committing to a purchase. When the consumer receives their sample, they’ll also receive bespoke marketing collateral and email communications to educate them on the benefits of the product, the USPs of the brand and where they can purchase the product. This enables the consumer to get a well-rounded experience of your product and brand, growing awareness in the market.

While it’s great to grow awareness of an NPD, if your main sampling objective is to support sales conversions it might be beneficial to focus on a hero product. By doing so, you’re sampling something that has already proven to be popular with consumers. As opposed to a product that they may not know much about already. The awareness phase is a big part of the customer purchase cycle. Sampling a hero product will enable you to reduce time spent in this phase. Ultimately pushing consumers further down the funnel in a shorter amount of time.?

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Understanding your customer and driving efficiency?

For each campaign run through Sampl we request feedback from consumers. We often use these surveys as an opportunity for market research to gain insight for the brands we work with. First, we align on the brand’s objectives. Next, we work together to produce a bespoke survey that drives the insight to support them. We recently worked with a brand whose objective was for their product stocked in a specific retailer. As part of the survey, we asked questions around propensity to purchase and where they would do so. We were then able to deduce which percentage of people who intended to purchase would do so at a specific retailer. The brand then took this information to the retailer, who agreed to stock their product. A fantastic result that the brand team was extremely pleased with!?

With hero products that have been on the market for some time, typically that means your business will have better insight into which demographic tends to purchase the product most frequently. This will make it easier to get your samples to the right people as you already know who they are. This will help to make ad targeting more accurate, and therefore more efficient. Potentially saving costs on advertising as well as improving the overall performance of your campaign. You can also use this as an opportunity to exclude the demographic that typically purchase the product in order to introduce it to new audiences too.?

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If you’re still unsure which product you’d like to run a sampling campaign for,?click here to contact us?for more information on how we can support you. For more inspiration,?follow us on LinkedIn.?