What Is Experiential Marketing?

• Experiential marketing directly engages consumers through participatory experiences.
• Customers generally feel more connected to brands and companies that offer alternative marketing models.
• Make sure you have solid goals, metrics and strategies in place before launching an experiential marketing campaign.
• This article is for small business owners interested in creating an experiential marketing plan.

There has been a lot of talk about the loss of effectiveness of traditional corporate marketing and advertising models. Consumers now deliver ads quickly, have ad blockers on their computers and, more than ever, are choosing commercial-free live TV streaming services.

It may be time for your company to change direction and move to experiential marketing, a method focused on connecting consumers with unique and dynamic brand experiences. This can include live events, installations, product launches, webinars and trade shows. According to the 2021 EventTrack research report, 40% of consumers say they feel greater brand loyalty after experiencing a brand experience or interaction, and 91% are more likely to purchase a product or service.

What is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing, or engagement marketing, is a marketing strategy that directly targets consumers and encourages them to engage in branded experiences.

“Experiential marketing, in its simplest definition, is a type of marketing based on creating memorable and innovative customer experiences to create a deep emotional connection between customers and brands,” said Esther Sauri, Marketing Specialist at Linkilaw Solicitors. .

In traditional marketing, consumers are viewed as passive recipients of corporate messages. With experiential marketing, a brand is directly targeting consumers, often providing insight into developing advertising campaigns. This allows companies to build relationships with consumers by allowing them to be a part of the campaign process from start to finish.

Why is it so effective?

“[Experiential marketing] is so effective because we are emotional creatures,” Sauri says. "When a brand creates an emotional connection with us, we not only buy it, we become loyal customers."

By involving your customers in the story, they feel connected rather than convinced and it makes a big difference in how they see your brand.

Take Lean Cuisine's #WeighThis campaign for example. The women were asked to weigh something important about themselves in addition to their weight. The responses were then collected and painted on an individual scale which is displayed on a gallery wall at New York's Grand Central Terminal. The answers ranged from "I take care of 200 homeless children every day" to "I'm going back to college at 55."

The brand then created a promotional video talking to the women about what they wrote and why.

An important aspect of the Lean Cuisine campaign is that Lean Cuisine products are never offered to anyone. The exhibit is clearly branded with the company's Twitter account and the hashtag #WeighThis, but that's about it: Lean Cuisine relies on the gallery walls to draw people in, creating an interactive experience around the message that women, more than just numbers, they are escalators. Success: The campaign generated over 204 million impressions.

How to plan an experience-based marketing campaign

1. Take a look at your customer base.

Before you start planning, it's important to review your current customer data to find out what types of experiential marketing will resonate with your target audience. This research could also give you insight into new markets. Consider customer segmentation to find the customers who engage best with your business.

Finding out who your customers are and what they want can give you valuable insights into your company's target audience. Then you can find out what types of experience campaigns they find appealing and interesting.

2. Consolidate your goals.

What do you hope to achieve with this campaign? Find new customers? Advertise a new product? Entering a new market? Once you've defined your ultimate goal, you can start preparing your campaign. Strategies should focus on measurable targets and audiences.

It's also important to define your brand at this stage. Understand exactly what you want this experience to convey about your brand values ​​and culture.

3. Identification of KPIs.

Before the campaign, it is very important to understand what success looks like. Review your goals, find out how to best measure key performance indicators (KPIs) and what data you would like to collect from customers during the campaign. Experiential marketing is a great way to gain nuanced customer data and gather personal feedback from attendees.

All businesses need specific goals for their brand, and every major decision should take these into account. Knowing your KPIs can help your business make better decisions.

4. Create a budget.

When planning a new type of campaign, it's important to have a marketing budget in place to ensure a return on investment or ROI. This is especially true for experiential marketing, as it often has multiple moving parts and goes beyond that, but it works with traditional marketing tools as well.

5. Implement a multi-channel marketing plan.

Depending on your goals, your experiential marketing can be delivered to a physical location. Remember, experiential marketing doesn't have to be a form of interaction. Your skills can be marketed on social media, broadcast live, and tagged. You can segment your audience to target those who may be in a physical location, while still allowing customers outside your local area to engage with your brand, e.g. B. by email, SMS or social media.

What to avoid in your campaign

Experiential marketing can be a gold mine when done right and a landmine when done poorly. Many businesses try experiential marketing on their own, knowing it's a modern, high-engagement practice, but without proper research and preparation, campaigns can easily explode.

“The biggest pitfall of experiential marketing is that it makes the experience too commercial,” said David Jacobson, founder and CEO of TrivWorks. “Attendees don't want to feel like they're in a sales phase. Make it too commercial and you'll turn them off or worse tell yourself they had a bad experience.

Companies should strive to create experiences that embody their values. As Ashley Pontius, Print Campaigns Manager at News & Experts puts it: “While experiential marketing [mostly] builds a brand, you focus [on building] the bigger picture .

As the advertising world is shifting towards experiential marketing, companies need to think hard before launching an engagement campaign. Is it good for your business? Can you invest the time, effort and money to get it right? Do you have a clear goal in mind? If so, an experiential marketing campaign can launch your business with positive interactions and loyal followers.

Hannah Tayson wrote and reported on this article. Source interviews were conducted for previous versions of this article.

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