Recently I couldn’t help but notice an ad on TV for laundry detergent brand Purex. The interesting thing about it was that at the end of the spot they suggested that people visit a website and register for a free sample of Purex detergent. This seemed to me like a pretty cool way to get people interested in and trialling their product. I duly visited the website to check it out. This is what I found: A pretty standard information capture form. No social sharing buttons. No opportunity to simply and easily share it with friends and family. Even after completing the form there is no prompt to share it with your friends. I also visited the Purex Canada Facebook fan page, and saw this post: Purex is actually doing great job of their social marketing. They have more than 9,000 fans in Canada, and more than 60,000 fans in the US. They are regularly posting, and have a pretty well engaged fan base. All in all, we are impressed. However, I think this was a missed opportunity.

Imagine if they had used our Social Offers to run this promotion

Firstly, those hardcore fans would have got a little reward for their participation in the fan community by being the first to get a free sample. Then, as those customers participated they would be sharing the free sample offer with their friends. This would have been a great way for Purex fans to introduce their friends to the brand. Because people generally tend to be friends with those similar to them, it is likely that those friends would be interested in a free sample, and by participating share with their friends. You can see how this could have quickly spread, and spread to those who were interested. Here is what this might have looked like:

Let’s look at some hypothetical numbers

Running this on their Canadian fan page, they have just over 9,000 fans. A regular (i.e. not promoted) status update is seen by approximately 16% of your fan base. So when their Social Offer for a free sample started approximatley 1,440 people would have seen it in their news feed. Their regular post I highlighted above was shared by more than 376 people. Let’s take that as a conservative estimate of the number of fans who might have participated. But wait, this is where things are just getting started. Each of those 376 people have an average of 400 friends each. This means that as they participate their participation is seen by a potential audience of 150,400. Again, let’s assume that only 16% of these people actually see the update (24,064), and a conservative 5% of these people participate (another 1,203 participants). We now have a total of 1,579 participants – 376 first degree (i.e. those who were already fans) and 1,203 second degree (i.e. friends of fans). Let’s look a couple of degrees further removed: Third degree participants = 1,203 (2nd degree participants) x 400 (average friends) x 16% (people who would see the update) x 2% (an even more conservative participation rate) = 2,309 Fourth degree participants = 2,309 x 400 x 16% x 1% = 1,477 As you can see I have reduced the participation rate dramatically as we get further away from the original fans of the page – assuming that these people are less likely to participate. So, we are just at 4 degrees of separation from the fan page, and we have already beaten the target of 5,000 participants, even with my conservative participation estimates. If I was a betting man, I would put my money on it happening within 3 degrees of separation in the real world. Don’t believe me that this could have happened? Check out our YYoga Social Offers case study to see how Canada’s largest yoga company used Social Offers with a much smaller fan base to sell 1,000 new memberships in less than 48 hours.

What would this have cost?

With Social Offers, you pay just $25 per 100 participants. In this case, Purex wanted to give away 5,000 samples. This would have cost them just $1,250. Of course, being a big brand they may have wanted some custom branding, and even some additional functionality. Even if that was the case, I can assure you it would have been a fraction of the cost of their national TV campaign.

In summary

Sampling campaigns are a great way to get your products into consumers hands, and get people talking about your products. While there were undoubtedly some secondary goals for the TV campaign (such as building brand awareness), using Social Offers would have been a much more cost effective way to distribute their 5,000 free samples, to the right people. If you would like to run a Social Offer for your business, head over and check it out. Purex, if you are reading, we would love to talk to you about your next sampling campaign!