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The Pharma Marketing Glossary
Seeding Trial

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A seeding trial or marketing trial is a form of marketing, conducted in the name of research, designed to target product sampling towards selected consumers. In medicine, seeding trials are clinical trials or research studies where the primary objective is to introduce the concept of a particular medical intervention—such as a pharmaceutical drug or medical device—to physicians, rather than to test a scientific hypothesis. In software, seeding trials are commonly termed beta-testing.

To create loyalty and advocacy towards a brand, seeding trials take advantage of opinion leadership to enhance sales, capitalizing on the Hawthorne Effect. In a seeding trial, the brand provides potential opinion leaders with the product for free, aiming to gain valuable pre-market feedback and also to build support among the testers, creating influential word-of-mouth advocates for the product. By involving the opinion leaders as testers, effectively inviting them to be an extension of the marketing department, companies can create "a powerful sense of ownership among the clients, customers or consumers that count" by offering engaging the testers in a research dialogue.