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Picture this - you developed your target list of potential stores and cross out the stores that don’t fit your criteria such as discount grocery outlets since you are selling a premium beverage product. Why should this store carry your CPG product? Did you bring anything other than some print materials?
Did you bring sufficient enough data that customers in this specific area will in fact buy your product on a repeat basis? According to a Nielsen statistic, only 15% of new CPG products will be successful.
Retail helps brands quickly scale by lowering acquisition costs through high-volume orders. However, retailers also don’t want to take on the risk without the proof that you can drive demand. Sampling is the intermediary that helps bridge the gap.
Conduct Market Research through Product Sampling
Since in-store tastings are halted for the time being one way to see how well your product will do is to run a few digital at-home product sampling campaigns targeting a specific geography you want to sell your products in retail.
Try to run this campaign for several months and see what type of customers are requesting your products and purchasing your products afterwards to gather a significant amount of customer data points.
One way to gather this data without sucking up a lot of time in the early stages of your company is to use Product Sampling management software like Sampoll XM that will not only track your product sampling inventory levels but it will also trigger an automated conversational feedback bot named SAM that will ask questions like “Hey customer X - what grocery stores do you usually frequent?”
Valuable information like this helps when you present your product to target grocers, especially if they see you are selling something their customers really like and are willing to buy!
Let Customers Advocate for You in the Stores
We know you are only a team of two or three but one way to expand your sales geography with limited bandwidth is to set up a brand ambassador program with your most adoring customers that purchased your product after requesting a product sample.
Nothing shows customer demand better than giving your customers a $50 gift card to advocate on your behalf to the store managers in their local area that they frequent.
Contact a Sampoll representative today at Book a strategy call! to see how you can acquire new retail accounts from digital product sampling.