Giving out free samples
As you make your way around the fourth ring of hell called “Costco on a Saturday morning,” you notice several small stands where senior citizens wearing hairnets and paper aprons are handing out free samples. From cream puffs to jalapeno poppers, the samples are quite popular.
Personally, I have a very healthy fear of food poisoning so I’d rather lick the floor of a Costco than eat their bruscetta sample. Nonetheless, I can’t deny the popularity of these little stands. Entire families crowd around, and many ask for seconds.
Turns out that suppliers pay a lot of money to be the featured morsel at these stands, and they lead to big sales of their products. My son nearly lost his mind last weekend after tasting a bagel pizza bite.
Bottom line: people love free samples.
Right now, in the business world, the free sample strategy is the rage. The bestselling book Free: The Future of a Radical Price is all about advancing your brand and bottom line by giving stuff away to lure in customers. Give away something cheap (cell phones) to sell something more expensive (the airtime). Give people something free in exchange for their marketing information that you then sell to other companies. Give people something for free on your website (a free downloadable document, for example) and then entice them to spend money for premium products. Invite people to the free seminar, get them excited, and then sell them the $995 DVD training kit at the conclusion.
The buying public, whether it realizes it consciously or not, is becoming trained by this free taste strategy. People expect to be able to test something out with no cost or obligation before they make a commitment to it. It’s not exactly a new concept (car salesman have been giving test drives forever), but it’s becoming more prevalent in the hyper-competitive world of Internet and technology companies.
This weekend, I went to the Apple Store and test-drove an iPad. Still not sure if I want to buy it, but playing around with it for 20 minutes made me like the idea of having one even more.
This got me to thinking about the start of the school year and all those student activity fairs. For generations, we’ve had these events where new students can come and learn about a wide variety of student organizations. You walk in to a large room, probably in the student union, and each organization has a table with a bunch of stuff on it. You might even chat with a couple of student leaders who volunteered to staff a particular organization’s table.
Does this still work? It seems a bit outdated to me.
Seems the best way to sell your student organization these days is to adopt the free sample mentality. Instead of standing at a table, telling a new student about your organization, invite him to come participate in something. Let a new student see your members having fun and interacting, then invite her to come and hang out. Let them sample the product before they commit to it.
Fraternities and sororities have known this for a long time. In the old days, you invited a freshman to a party, got him drunk, and put a pledge pin on him in the morning when he woke up on your party room couch. Today, better methods are employed, but the concept is still the same. The coolest brochure in the world is no substitute for potential new members actually interacting and experiencing some of the fun and connection of the Greek experience. Invite a new member to play along side of you in an intramural football game, and there’s a strong chance he’s going to join.
For other organizations, the “free sample” strategy works just as well. Even small clubs can do something in the early weeks of the school year that allows new students to see and feel the organization. Whatever you do, make sure it’s interactive, fun, and that your members are actually talking to new students. It can be mostly social, that’s fine.
The start of the year is the very best opportunity to generate new interest in your club or organization. Take a few moments as we reach the mid-point of summer and make sure you have some “free sample” activities in those first weeks of the new academic year. Put yourself out there. Connect with people and make some new friends. Give away free coffee out on the quad. Have a free throw contest at a residence hall. Have a big open meeting where the whole campus is invited to hear a guest speaker on a current topic.
And if all else fails, I recommend the bagel pizza bites.
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