How Often Should You Be Doing In-Store Sampling Events?

So you’ve decided to start running in-store demos for your brand. Great! Welcome to one of the best things you can do for your brand and your products. But your journey has just begun. There are a lot of things you need to decide about your demo strategy, including what, where, when and how. We’ve got a lot of blogs on our blog page to help you with the what, the where and the how, so today we’re going to focus on the when.

Specifically, how often should you be running in-store demos for your products?

What’s The Ideal Frequency?

Truthfully, the number of demos you do will largely depend on the size of your business and brand, as well as what your ultimate aims are, and the number of products involved. A bigger brand might need to stage demos on a regular basis while a smaller brand might only need to consider demos on a seasonal basis. So while it might not be the best answer, the most accurate is ‘it depends’. 

The best thing you can do is speak to a professional product demo company (like us) about your products and what you’re trying to achieve, and we can help you set out the best strategy for your brand. What we can say for certain is that there are a few things that may influence how often you run demos, including:

Goals: In-store demos form one part of the overall marketing mix, so it makes sense to look at it in that context.  Ask yourself – what are your marketing goals for the year? What does evidence show are the best ways to reach your audiences? Are you trying to shift your marketing efforts away from traditional advertising and more into engaging and building relationships with customers? Your goals can have a huge influence on how often your brand should run in-store demos. 

Budget: Your budget will have a huge effect on the frequency of your in-store demos, and the types of demos you run. In fact, it will give you a pretty clear idea of how many times a month or year you can afford to do in-store demos, and how big they can be. It will also impact other decisions in the process, like whether you use your own staff or hire in an expert to help you. Some brands with bigger budgets can run a new in-store demo in a different location every week with hired-in help, while others will look at running 2 or 3 a year at key points in their calendar.

Audience: As we mentioned earlier, experiential marketing like in-store demos aren’t really about your brand – they’re about your audience. Which means your audience will dictate exactly how many demos you need to run. If you’re targeting multiple demographics, then you will need to run more frequent events to capture them all. For example, your approach to marketing to university students will be different to families. Even if your products target both of those groups, you will need different techniques and messages to capture their attention. Which means more events and more varied locations. 

Experience: The amount of experience your brand has with experiential marketing will also have an impact on how often you run in-store demonstrations and free sample events. Looking back, how well did previous attempts perform? Did you achieve the desired boost in sales, raise awareness and engagement? Or did they fail to meet your goals? If it’s the latter, then it’s worth looking into some training, or hiring a dedicated experiential marketing company to help you test the waters again, and develop a plan moving forward.

Which is why the answer really is ‘it depends!’ What doesn’t change through all of this is the quality of the demo you need to make it a success. 

Pic copyright Phil Tragen 2023

Choose Peak Hours

Once you’ve chosen your dates, you need to look at your times. Since two of the biggest advantages of in-store demos are showcasing new products and getting customer feedback, you’ll want to schedule your demos during the shop’s busiest hours. That means you’ll get to engage with more shoppers, build more relationships and get enough feedback to plan for future stocking and development. Plus, the more foot traffic you have, the more likely you are to boost your sales!

The best way to do this is to just talk to the store manager of the shop you’re demoing in! They will be able to tell you all sorts of things about their shop, including footfall and ideal times for scheduling demos.

Remember, good demos aren’t all about your product. They’re all about your audience. Sounds kooky, but trust us. The success of a product demo isn’t judged on how many features you can showcase – it’s about how At Fizz, we’ve been crafting and delivering product demos from leading brands since 1986, working closely with our clients to make sure every demo puts their audience first. If you’re interested in running in-store product demos but don’t know where to start, we would love to help. Just get in touch with the team today to book your free, no-obligation consultation.

At Fizz, food sampling is in our blood. It’s what we’ve been doing for over 30 years, and we do it well. We offer a complete end-to-end experiential marketing service for food and drinks brands, providing all of the strategic thinking as well as the practical, boots on the ground work for your sampling experiences. We have the skills and knowledge to make sure the event is delivered to your high standards, and ours. If you’d like to know more about food sampling and how we go about it, give us a call today and book your free consultation.