It shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out how product sampling has persisted as a marketing method for not just generations, but a century or so (the practice of handling out free samples having been popular since the 19th century, when it was used by famous soap maker, Benjamin Babbitt). 

When it comes to helping to spread awareness about your brand – and not only that, but effectively educating your target audiences about your products and what they are missing out on – there are few things as powerful as product sampling. 

We aren’t just claiming that to be the case – it’s borne out in the statistics. One consumer packaged goods (CPG) company found that almost seven in 10 of its customers were persuaded to buy a product after receiving free samples. 

But it’s one thing to know that handing out free samples of products ranging from cosmetics to beverages can be effective… and quite another thing to ensure you have the right promotional sampling staff on your team. 

Your sampling staff, after all, will be key to the success of your next product sampling campaign, and will need to be strong ambassadors for your brand in general. So, how can you recruit the staff who will be well-placed to help you get the most out of this aspect of your marketing? 

Consider how many product sampling staff you will need 

Naturally, you can’t be sure exactly how many members of the public will turn up and engage with your product sampling campaign, whether it happens at a separate event or in-store as part of your brand’s ‘normal’ high-street operations. 

However, you should still have some idea of how many people you will be aiming to attract on a given day with your sampling efforts – and therefore, the numbers of samples you will need to have ready to distribute. The specific location of your product sampling event will also impact on how many potential customers you can expect to appear and engage with your brand and products. 

All of this will feed into your attempts to determine how many promotional sampling staff you will require. Having too few sampling staff on hand could mean there are large queues, or it might mean that some people take a sample without engaging with your staff – which could reduce the impact of your sampling event. But of course, you also won’t want to burn too much of your organisation’s finite financial resource on hiring more staff than you require. 

Think about the personal qualities, training, and experience your sampling staff will need 

We recently wrote here at BrandWarriors about some of the qualities you should expect your company’s brand ambassadors to have – such as positivity, reliability, and conversational skills. And you might imagine, correctly, that these characteristics should also be present in your business’s promotional sampling staff. 

As well as the above, though, you should ensure candidates for your promotional sampling roles are confident engaging with the public, and have experience of doing so both independently and as part of a team. 

There might also be slightly more specialised qualifications that you expect your promotional sampling staff to have, depending on the types of samples that will be offered. An obvious example would be qualifications in food handling and safety, if it is food samples that they will be handing out. 

Work alongside a trusted promotional sampling staff agency 

Just imagine how much time it would take for you, especially if you have literally never previously recruited staff for a product sampling campaign, to build up a contacts list and database of candidates, and to put together effective systems for processing and onboarding candidates. 

Let’s just say, you would be consuming a lot of resources if you were to try taking on these processes all by yourself. 

Furthermore, you don’t need to do so, when you have the option of joining forces with a highly reputable promotional sampling staff agency, such as BrandWarriors. We already have extremely well-developed networks, and an excellent track record and experience in hiring promotional staff.

We could go on and on, but you probably get the idea; with decades of experience behind us as a promotional staffing agency, here at BrandWarriors, we can help take the stress out of finding the right sampling staff for your own next big event or campaign. Simply reach out to us now to learn more.