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16. SAMPLING DEMONSTRATIONS BASICS Letting customers try and see to increase ‘appetite’
• Create a link between the tasting and products for sale – e.g., have
follow-on offering to leverage the customer traffic and their interest
e.g., buyers can even try it themselves
•
“Every kid gets a free piece of fruit”
•
“Watch how coconut drink is made and try it yourself”
•
“Taste our coffee and ask any question on coffee X”
WHAT
WHEN
HOW
E.g.
•
Sampling: Product has a special or new unknown taste or mystique, yet
cost of tasting is relatively little
•
Demonstration: interesting, exotic and involving product preparation
•
Giving customers a small sample for free to induce purchase
•
Showing preparation education to build involvement
IN-STORE PROMO 16
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Demonstrations make people stop and make them curious. A nice thing about demonstrations is that they can be done for free and yet are effective
―that is a beautiful combination in marketing. Sampling, or tasting: treat them as investments. Calculate how many extra items you have to sell
as a result of sampling to cover your costs of sampling. Do not be afraid to give away free things and samples in modest and reasonable amounts. Just calculate how fast and easy the ‘return on
this investment’ can be in the form of increased sales.
Using honey as an example, assume you let 20 people walking by taste the honey probably not even a full teaspoon per person. What does it cost you to do this free honey sampling? Probably
much less than what you make on selling one jar. And if the honey really is good and you do a good job explaining it, then no doubt one of these 20 people will buy.
If without your giving the samples away to these 20 people, none of them would have bought the honey or even stopped by your stand, then this sampling ‘mini-campaign’ was a good ‘return on
investment’.
Surely you could convince five of these people to buy a jar of honey ― five people that would not
have even stopped by your stand if it was not for the big appealing sign, your free sampling offer, and your explanation as to why this honey is good for them and why it is so special.
Samplings and demonstrations are an especially useful technique with new or tasty food products. An important note
―do not just demonstrate or sample, but also offer the product subsequently. Try to offer it in a special way. Do not just ask ‘Do you want to buy it?’. Section 3.1 provides more
information on this.
– 2.3 PROMOTION: In-store Promotions –
The next pages cover the topic of store atmosphere. What do you think
constitutes store atmosphere?
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17. STORE ATMOSPHERE Making people want to buy a piece of their Pohnpei memory
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