The marketing tactic that most directly changes consumer behavior — sampling — is frequently left at the bottom of the marketing budget.

Study after study confirms a direct correlation between trial and purchase. IMI International’s August 2006 survey indicated that sampling has the greatest impact on consumer purchase, a finding consistent for the past 15 years.

The surest way to generate trial is to simply give a sample to a targeted consumer, one that is pre-disposed to a brand’s product. According to a March 2007 survey conducted by the Promotion Marketing Association’s Product Sampling Council, a whopping 92% of consumers said they’d buy a new product if they tried and liked the sample they received (if the purchase price was acceptable).

When asked “if a brand wanted to convince you to buy its product, which type of advertising/promotion would most likely convince you to switch brands,” 62% of consumers selected sampling to other types of marketing (i.e., TV advertising, direct mail, print ads, coupons, etc.), according to the IMI study.

So, why do consumer packaged goods brands allocate less than 1% of their promotion budget on product sampling?

That’s the question that the PMA council set out to uncover. In a survey directed at many of the nation’s largest consumer goods companies, brand marketers were asked in February 2007 if company executives were supportive of product sampling efforts. While 72% said “yes,” they were also quick to add that sampling is often the first thing to go when budgets are cut.

When asked if sampling has a less desirable image than other forms of marketing, 64% of marketers replied “yes.” Those queried indicated that “sampling lacks the glitz-factor other marketing techniques have gained” and that “sampling is seen as an entry-level marketing assignment” and that it “doesn’t result in gratuitous self-promotion.”

When asked, “What is the main reason for not doing more product sampling?” most marketers agreed that it “takes too much of the brand’s promotion budget.”

The study asked if their brands were measuring large-scale sampling programs to know whether or not programs were delivering a positive ROI. While 63% said “yes,” the majority of those respondents stated that small market research budgets are often an issue and prevent many programs from being measured. One company representative stated that even with good results, “tried and true programs are often abandoned for new, sexy marketing programs.”

The council was interested in learning if another suspicion was correct. It believed that brand spending in traditional sampling programs (programs owned by companies specializing in product sampling) had decreased in recent years.

Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said sampling spending had shifted from traditional sampling programs to agency-driven events. Why? The common answer was that sampling is now integrated into the overall marketing plan, under the guise of “integrated marketing strategy.”

The council believes that neither the brand, nor the agency, are defining objectives, outlining success criteria, or thinking about how sampling will be measured. One sampling vendor said, “It’s no wonder some brands put millions of dollars into event sampling programs that never pay out because no one plans to meet any quantifiable objectives!”

What effect do these issues have on marketing plans? “Less effective, less efficient sampling programs,” suggests Cindy Johnson, P&G’s former sampling programs manager. She’s now the owner of Sampling Effectiveness Advisors, a consulting firm that specializes in product sampling effectiveness.

“Product sampling is the most powerful marketing tool a brand can use,” she says. “It is the actual brand experience. It can also be an expensive investment on a per-consumer basis, so to use product samples to support some other less-impactful marketing activity makes absolutely no sense.”

While there is no easy way to resolve the issues relating to budgeting priorities, the Product Sampling Council wants to help marketers feel more comfortable about the investment by developing tools to help them improve program results.

A new Web site at www.samplingeffectiveness.com/tools provides product sampling data and tools.

“Product sampling is not a short-term promotion vehicle but rather, a long-term investment in brand loyalty,” Johnson says.

For more articles on sampling, go to http://promomagazine.com/sampling

Your sales are slipping and you can’t understand why. Your branding comes out fuzzy. Your newest test just never got off the ground. You’re not sure where your market’s coming from. And – you’re losing touch with your customers.

For a while it seemed everything was under control, and then one or more of these symptoms appeared. Sometimes it’s a mystery, other times it’s impending tragedy. You’ve had scores of meetings; you’ve called in the specialists. What’s next?

Take heart. It happens to the best of us. Things that should work stop working; things we always counted on can start changing colors. When this happens, it’s time to start talking to your customers.

If you’re really concerned, you couldn’t do better than calling them to your table for some serious, carefully structured talk. With well-planned and executed focus groups, solutions will be there. And possibly, some surprises. Focus groups can benefit mail order catalogs, magazines, financial services, insurers and even business-to-business situations.

Such customer groups can help you evaluate your product or product line and better understand why the customer bought from you in the first place (or continues to buy from you now). They can give you a clearer picture of your market – its hopes, desires, dreams and aspirations – and insights on how your product or service fits in.

Focus groups can uncover big selling benefits you never thought about. They can often spew out unrehearsed headlines that send your creative people into happy trances. They can point out unperceived or unsuspected flaws in customer relations and/or fulfillment that drive customers crazy. They can come up with small suggestions to improve your product that may not have seemed terribly important to you but sure do to them. They can tell you specifically why your product – although similar to the competition – is better, more satisfying, higher quality, etc. They can give you new ideas for add-on products and services. They can even come up with new and very exciting branding ideas.

First you have to decide specifically what you need to know, and then go about your planning with a top professional. If you do, your focus groups will not fail you. Whatever it is you need to know, they’ll come through. Here are three real examples of very different focus group uses.

Focus on offer. A major insurance company offered term life insurance to young couples who just had their first child. Part of the direct mail offer was a premium providing a small life insurance policy on the baby for only $1. On reviewing the offer, the management team felt that such a premium might be considered tasteless, because it implies that a young baby might die. The team recommended that the company simply get rid of it. But happily, befo re doing anything drastic, they decided to conduct a few focus groups.

Each focus group firmly reinforced that the primary reason for purchasing the policy was this simple $1 policy for the baby. It was convertible at age 18 and gave the child guaranteed life insurance, something many of the parents said they had been denied.

Focus on product. A major garden catalog company with a significant section on Christmas amaryllis plants watched amaryllis sales steadily decline for several years. There were no clear explanations, so the company conducted several focus groups for former purchasers and gift recipients. The response to product and service was excellent. But much probing showed that the company’s biggest customers and those who received the amaryllis gifts had learned to winter-over the old plant, building collections of them that continued to bloom every year. Almost to a respondent, they were delighted with their amaryllis but had more than enough.

This, of course, led the company to plan for a new group of flowers for giving, to encourage new donors and replace the lost donors and gift recipients.

Focus on branding and positioning. Golf for Women magazine was not satisfied that its subscribers purchased the magazine simply to help themselves play better golf, though this is an obvious benefit.

The company felt if it could better define what subscribers meant by “playing better golf” it might be able to promote the magazine more aggressively against the competitors. The circulation people set up several subscriber focus groups and the very first group, after extensive delving, picked up a thread that repeated itself throughout all groups.

After careful questioning, they found women were more competitive than they had initially assumed. Although they played with other women in friendly games, when it came to men they really wanted to shine. After more probing in all groups it turned out that these women really wanted to beat their husbands at golf!

Golf for Women tested this with an outer-envelope color photograph change on the control package. It showed a woman in front, victoriously sinking a putt, while her partner was brought to his knees in anguish. The copy read “How Sweet It Is! When I sank the putt that beat him, I had to pick my husband up off the green!” This single picture change on the control package lifted response more than 30%. It also gave Golf for Women a new image in its promotion – one that would set them apart from the competition and give them the edge. All thanks to focus groups.

If you’re concerned about customer problems, a falloff in your prospecting or want more creative strength in your promotions, focus groups can more than pay for themselves. Here are some guidelines to help make sure you’re successful.

1. Don’t use focus groups to evaluate finished promotion pieces. Somehow, the participants feel like critics, not like the normal human beings or the customers they are supposed to represent. Frequently one vociferous participant will make a strong, negative comment and others, fearing to sound weak or unsophisticated, string along with the opinion. In direct mail, too often the envelope is ridiculed and people insist they’d never open it. Recommendations to cut out letters, and cut down on copy, go against all direct response rules. Packages “designed by focus groups” are notorious for their poor performance.

2. Choose a presenter with a good track record and sound training on conducting such groups. The ability to question and probe in a friendly way is an art and a crucial aspect of a successful focus group. And the groups cannot associate the group leader with your company. He or she must represent neutral ground.

3. Carefully determine what you want to learn from your customers well in advance. Then work with the conductor in formulating questions that will lead to uncovering the answers you need.

How do your customers feel about the kind of service/product your company provides? How does itfit into their lifestyle? What do they perceive it will provide for them or their family? How do they see your company, service or product in comparison to similar companies, services and/or products?

4. One focus group, no matter how good it seems, can be misleading. At least three to four should be conducted so that overall results can be compared. Geographic selection depends on the distribution of your customers. If you have a broad national base, focus groups can be selected accordingly; if you skew regionally, such a skew should be reflected. When doing groups for prospects, the same aspects should be taken into consideration (with a customer overlay) unless you’re just starting out. You’ll find that certain cities in the Midwest and middle eastern states make for especially good focus group sites because their results are more reliable and projectable.

5. One last and crucial guideline: No matter how clear your focus group response, always test the results before making any changes in your promotion.