Product sampling is used by brands worldwide to increase user-generated content (UGC) for products. In a typical sampling campaign, brands send products to shoppers for free in exchange for their honest feedback in the form of reviews, photos, and video content. 

It’s a proven strategy for generating reviews, creating social buzz around products, helping products sell faster, and providing greater shopper confidence. In fact, we surveyed 6,000 samplers in the Influenster community and found that 63% of them purchased a product they’ve sampled and 87% recommended the product/brand to friends and family. 

McPherson’s, a B2B company serving customers across Australasia, recently saw how successful product sampling can be for their brands. When they were building their new e-commerce platform a few years ago, they knew they would need a robust ratings and reviews program. They partnered with Bazaarvoice to develop sampling campaigns and boost UGC on their sites. Today, McPherson’s estimates that about 20% of their new ratings and reviews come from sampling.

Sampling brings success 

McPherson’s worked with the Bazaarvoice team to populate their e-commerce site with reviews and syndicate those reviews to their market-leading retail partners.

Once these reviews were on the site, McPherson’s next challenge centered around creating UGC for products that were about to launch. That’s when they started using sampling to get new products into the hands of engaged, loyal customers in exchange for ratings and reviews. 

They started sampling with a new face massager from Manicare called Nova Fit. The campaign was so successful that the brand currently has about two sampling campaigns running at any given time. 

Our new case study explores how McPherson’s created a successful sampling and UGC program for their brand and their associated retailers. They have also found ways to incorporate UGC into their landing pages and social media campaigns. Plus, the product development team uses ratings and reviews to learn more about what customers like and don’t like about current items so they can continuously improve. 

Learn more about how McPherson’s continues to succeed with sampling and UGC in our case study here.