Turn Free Samples into a Billion-Dollar Empire: The Estée Lauder Effect
There’s an actual science behind your weakness for free cheese samples. Estée Lauder proved that giving away your product might just be the smartest business move you'll ever make. This time-tested strategy can be used by businesses of all sizes and industries to turn curious browsers into loyal customers. Spoiler alert: it's not just about the freebies.
There’s something about getting a free sample that lights up the inner bargain hunter inside all of us.
Never even heard of lavender fudge? Then someone gives you a free sample at the supermarket, and suddenly you’re nodding seriously along as an official flavour aficionado who has always had a keen interest in diverse tasting profiles.
A lumpy, strangely beige protein shake that promises to be ‘better than a chocolate milkshake’? You’re happily choking that down as a little treat whilst you peruse the aisles (never mind you haven’t set foot in a gym for about 6 months).
Whilst producers have been flagging their wares for centuries, there’s one iconic lady who turned the free sample into a billion-dollar empire.
In 1946, New York, Estée Lauder was desperate to get her skincare brand into one of the giant department stores that were the height of women’s luxury (think Saks Fifth Avenue, filled with ladies adorned in pearls and carting around vicious poodles in their purses).
None of the executives would meet with such a new brand, let alone one started by a woman, but this didn’t deter her.
Instead, she snuck into a fancy event and gave away free lipsticks and face creams for all the well-to-do clientele to try.
After using the products themselves, these high-society ladies were all but banging on the windows of the department stores, screaming for easier access to these revolutionary products.
Now, over 75 years later, Estée Lauder is a staple at any department store beauty counter, and yes - you’ll still get enough free samples to fill your heart’s desire.
If revenue in the billions doesn’t convince you, read on.
Anecdotally, you know free samples work, but I’ll let these fancy statistics back things up for themselves.
73% of consumers said they were likely to buy a product after trying a free sample.
35% of consumers who try a sample will buy the product in the same shopping trip.
81% of consumers say that trying a sample encourages them to try something new, including unfamiliar brands.
Offering free samples can increase brand awareness by up to 90%.
Customers who receive a sample are twice as likely to become loyal customers.
Sampling can boost product recall by 40% compared to traditional advertising methods.
Free trials in SaaS boost conversion rates by up to 25% when paired with onboarding support.
In e-commerce, sample box programs have achieved conversion rates of over 20%, far higher than standard digital ads.
Brands often report an ROI of 3 to 10 times their sampling investment.
In physical retail, sampling campaigns can increase sales of the sampled product by up to 600% on the day of the event.
The Psychology Behind the Free Sample
It might seem almost counterintuitive in business to give away some of your product for free.
Why would someone be more inclined to buy something from you when they’ve already got it without spending a cent?
Well, there’s a heck of a lot of psychology behind the free sample (and no, it’s not just simply because you don’t have enough willpower to say no to a free morsel of cheese).
Reciprocity Principle
Robert Cialdini's psychological theory seems simple: if you give someone something, they’ll want to return the favour to you.
Sounds like a beautiful human trait, right? cue the awws
Well, good marketers have learned exactly how to exploit that trait… cue the ohhs.
Studies show that potential customers are more likely to respond positively to a business if they have received something of value from that business first. By giving customers free samples, they then feel obligated to return the ‘kindness’ to you in some way.
And what’s the best way to treat a business with kindness? Opening your wallet and handing over your cold, hard cash.Endowment Effect and Loss Aversion
Not just isolated to the stock exchange floor, loss aversion is hardwired into our brains over even the most trivial of situations.
Once we feel like we ‘own’ something, we place a higher value on it and can’t bear to think of losing it again - even if we didn’t even want it in the first place.
There’s a reason that beauty brands like Estée Lauder happily hand out face cream samples (and no, it’s not because you won the sales assistant over with your dazzling personality). Use that free skincare sample every night for a week, and once it runs out, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.Dopamine Effect
Whether it’s tied in a big ribbon bow, or chucked in a paper bag, when you receive a ‘gift’, your brain says ‘yay!’ and does a little dopamine happy dance.
Often called the ‘feel-good’ hormone, this chemical messenger is released when we experience pleasure, and is a critical part of the motivation and reward pathways in our brains.
By stimulating dopamine release through the ‘reward’ of a free sample, we automatically associate that brand with that warm and fuzzy feeling, and we will actively seek it out again.
Does that make us sound like dogs getting trained with treats? Maybe a little.
Does it work? Absolutely.
Pavlov, eat your heart out.
Now, we’re not saying you have to channel your inner Estée Lauder and hand out over 50,000 samples in your first year (yes, she really did that). But there’s an undeniable, research-backed power in the free sample as an accessible marketing tool for all.
So the next time you’re ravenously stuffing free samples into your mouth or enjoying some mini cosmetics, make sure to send a silent thank you to the woman who revolutionised the industry.
Here’s how smaller businesses can channel their inner EL:
Get in your customer's face
Not everyone has a store, or multiple physical touch points where the customer is right there in front of you - you might just have to go to them instead.
To (mis)quote baseball: ‘Build it, and they will come’.
Pop-up activations in shopping malls, turning the space into an event with free mini-services or goodie bags, mimic the old-school department store counters.
As meta as this sounds, a physical sample doesn’t have to be with the customer physically to pique their interest. No, this isn’t a Black Mirror episode - with everyone constantly attached to their phones and social media (yes, all of us - just admit it), influencer gift boxes reach untapped audiences and take them along the sample journey through their screens. A foolproof way to create maximum impact at minimal cost.Think digital
Yes, the classic sample is the mini product in a department store or bite-sized snacks in supermarkets, but this doesn’t fit every business.
When offering freebies, get creative - service-based businesses could offer free consultations or workshops, and digital subscription businesses can offer free trials or free downloads. Hand out the (mega)bite-sized digital samples of your business, and taste the success.
And if you just cannot possibly think of anything you could give away from your business, just give something - anything! Adore Beauty is famous for its now iconic free TimTam that it includes in every single order. Ahh, bribery.Consider a loyalty program
Once you’ve nailed the free sample technique, you can consider taking it up a notch.
Introducing a loyalty program, where higher spend equals better samples, can level up the psychological influence you have on your customers. See: The Mecca Beauty Loop program - ranging from Level 1 rewards (with basic sachet samples) to Level 4 (with full-sized product gifts), Mecca loyalists are willing to spend the $3,500 minimum per year purely to retain their coveted Level 4 status. For an even deeper dive into the exclusivity of the Mecca program, I recommend googling ‘Mecca Magic Circle Level 5’ (and they say it’s not a cult… pfft).
YOUR FREE SAMPLE…
Annndd because you read (or scrolled) to the end, why not experience the Estée Lauder effect yourself, right here with Milkshake’s ‘free sample’…
Grab our free resource: The Ultimate Guide to Brand Psychology and learn how to apply these techniques yourself.
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