To grow our brand into millions of homes, we gave away 100,000+ free products.
Simply put, sampling is HUGELY underleveraged, and commonly more effective than traditional advertising.
Here’s how the best in the biz strategize to get their products into the right hands. 🧵
The Power of Sampling
-Sampling to the right people unlocks EXPONENTIAL value—retail placements, virality, user generated content, & more
-Customer loyalty skyrockets because recipients feel valued and grateful
-Sampling within communities unlocks organic buzz and word of mouth
Your VIP List
-If anyone could try your product, who would you send it to?
-Make a list across press, celebrities, and industry influencers—go big and don’t hold back
-Do it in waves—the more clustered your samplings, the more clustered your conversations
Ship it Cold to VIPs
If DMs fail, ship to whatever address you can surface on Google. Slap ATTN: Talent manager/beauty editor/VC partner/category manager/etc on there and cross your fingers
The majority of these will fail but the ones that work will make up for that in spades
Trade Shows
The most valuable place you can ever sample is a trade show. It will unlock retail accounts, suppliers, brokers, and a host of support you didn’t even realize your business needed. Sampling at trade shows is the best way to 10x your professional network. Period.
Your product is the best, right? Skip the song and dance and sample directly to your target audience, creating repeat customers. It’s better than spending $30 to acquire them via Facebook ads.
Don’t dump all your marketing $$$ into paid social.
The Art of Sampling
-Design the experience to be sharable
-Give tips and context about the best ways to use the product
-Incentivize posting on social media (UGC goldmine)
-Monitor cohort retention data
-Include an affiliate program
-Collect reviews
Don’t Miss the Follow-Up
-Engage the customer for open-ended feedback about their experience
-Survey them with quantifiable metrics
-Recycle this data into a product dev feedback flywheel
-Track the customer’s future purchase behavior
-Reward top customers for spreading the word
Bottom line:
If you believe in your product’s ability to wow and retain customers, sampling will be one of your most efficient marketing channels, spurring brand loyalty and activating brand community along the way—leaving you less dependent on erratic paid advertising channels.
If you liked this thread, follow me @chriscantino for more marketing insights and mental models to scale your startup and career. ✌️
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I've advised dozens of businesses on product innovation, from six-figure startups to eleven-figure conglomerates.
Here are the surprising frameworks the most successful ones use to incubate and market their products. 🧵
They don’t just see purchases—they see routines
-Instead of hyper-focusing on acquisition, they obsess over how, when, and why customers use their products
-New SKUs aren’t just revenue drivers—they’re to embed the brand further into the customer’s daily routine
They don’t just see customers—they see networks
-Activating word of mouth is priority #1
-Marketing is to establish purchase behavior for entire households and social groups—not just individuals
-Their products are designed to be shared
A checklist of things it took for us to scale to a 9-figure acquisition:
🌀 Product, Pt. 1: The Star of your Business
☑ Nail a pricing strategy
☑ Root product development in customer intel + shopper data
☑ Substantiate claims with studies and trials
☑ Consistently test + iterate; development is never done
🌀 Product, Pt. 2
☑ Research + incorporate third party data; monitor + explore trends
☑ Quality check vendors and logistics partners like your brand depends on it
☑ Expand into categories that are not just opportunistic, but construct a larger brand narrative
99% of brands are skipping out on opportunities to earn trust and engagement.
Here’s how the best in the game do it, and examples of where startups can make huge gains while their competition stands on the sidelines. 👇
Transparency: a word that has lost its meaning.
Sharing where ingredients come from? Giving back by planting a few hundred trees? I cringe through every halfhearted about page, wondering: what does this brand really stand for?
One good deed does not translate into authenticity.
The ones worth rooting for? Those offering a look behind the curtain into how their businesses operate, and all the messy failures along the way. And more importantly, showing us what the hell our money is actually supporting.
-Consumables hoarding is creating artificial shortages and disrupting orderly supply chains
-Most “small” businesses losing $1-10k/day
-Immediate, direct funding (not just loans) needed to save small entities
-Significant drop in investing and deal activity
-PDX stands to lose dozens of performing arts venues
-Xenophobic attacks on biz owners
-We can’t afford to NOT directly fund local recovery; as evidenced by prior recovery acts, it will prove more costly to rebuild than keep afloat
-The most marginalized and vulnerable must be first in line for assistance
-Washington is not trusted or expedient, thus we need to rely on community leaders to convey information
-Biz leaders have the appetite and ability to bridge comms gap between government and the public