Experiential marketing directly connects with the customers, effectively creating product awareness. The business and product’s awareness reaches face to face with the customers. Experiential marketing can also be called “event marketing”, “on-ground marketing”, “live marketing”, “participation marketing”, and “Loyalty Marketing”.
If you are a business owner and want to improve your business where your other marketing strategies are falling flat then Experiential marketing can solve the issue. This marketing strategy directly connects with the customers, so the customers will be aware of the product and understand the whole purpose.
Experiential Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide
How Does Experiential Marketing Work?
As business owners, people may use content marketing through blogs, social media marketing through Facebook and Instagram, and email marketing through newsletters. New engaging content will be created to attract the customers, so the customers will directly engage with the product by knowing more about the product.
This method of marketing may sometimes be Experiential marketing as the marketing is customer-centric and directly involves customer engagement. The comments on social media project your brand’s awareness and possibilities to drive the business. When you interact with the customers through words, the identity of your product will be revealed.
Nowadays, traditional and business marketing are fading away as a lot of brand promotion is on the lane, which makes the customers used to it. An attraction or attention is not easily gained through such marketing. Also, consumers skip all advertisements and have ad blockers, so promotions are ignored, and the reach may wane.
Introducing trade shows, live events, webinars, and direct promotions confronts the customers. The EventTrack research report 2021 says that 40% of consumers felt loyalty to the brand, and 91% felt that they would purchase the product.
Planning an Experiential Marketing Campaign
Customer base identification: Before beginning an event, first understand the customers’ needs and base. Plan how the experiential marketing reverberates with the audience so that exposing the product will be easier.
Customer segmentation has to be part of a plan to differentiate each customer into targeted groups that may increase sales. Dividing the customers on their characteristics may help to install the events easily.
Clear message communication: Be precise about what you promote and list out what your product delivers. Communication is the first and best key role in marketing; as experiential marketing directly involves customer engagement, the messages must be perfect and clear.
Promote your product directly to the customers by understanding it easily and how they get attracted to the product to buy it.
Creating a campaign that benefits a value: Developing experiential marketing should always return a value, so planning must be a key point to install trade events successfully. The final output of the marketing has to at least bring out an experience to the customers to buy the product. Goals should be implemented in marketing to achieve a return on investment (ROI).
Emphasizing your goals: The base goal of your business has to be planned and solidified. After preparing a clear marketing strategy, the event promotion and the system installed on the trading day have to be finalized.
And also, it is very important to define your product at this stage. The exact brand value and culture should be recognized so that introduction to the customers will be much easier.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) identification: It is important to understand the success before the campaign. Analyze your intended goals, and find how to measure the key performance indicators and how they can be obtained from the customers.
Experiential marketing is a great method to engage with customers by getting direct feedback and customer data. Using direct customer participation, the marketing can show a real product experience.
Budget creation: Planning a marketing budget is also a key to the campaign’s success. The marketing budget is necessary to ensure the return of investment or ROI. Marketing budgets are usually planned on an annual or quarterly basis.
The marketing budget aligns your marketing strategies with your business goals. Your team will know exactly how much money should be allocated to the staff, campaigns, promotions, and more through a marketing budget. Hence budget goals will make your marketing process easier, planned, and systematic.
Cross-channel marketing plan: Cross-channel marketing is a multi-marketing channel combo where more inputs can be given to the customers. Experiential marketing can be installed with many other marketing techniques to reach customers. When you make a marketing event in a physical location, a cross channel can be introduced here where the events conducted can be directly promoted through social media marketing.
Promoting through multiple marketing channels improves your brand reach, and the customers engage with fully-fledged trust to buy the product.
Implementing augmented reality: Introducing new technology to the marketing may attract customers. To use the product, the business owners may install augmented reality in their marketing plans so that the customers will be able to try out the products.
Augmented reality helps the customers try out the products virtually so that the customers can find where the products can fit.
Creating an engaging campaign: The interactive campaign should be introduced so that when the interaction increases, the customers will enjoy the brand’s innovation and try to buy the product. More brands are introducing interactive ways like a musical piano staircase where people climb up with musical steps, sky diving with the brand name, flying out promotional air balloons, etc.
Such campaigns can attract customers to experience the new marketing methodologies and make the customers buy the product.
Inspiring customers to convey the information: Promoting your products through experiential marketing attracts the customers so that customers may check in the events on social media. Encourage the customers to promote your brand through social media for free. More reach can be obtained when the customers post your trade events, campaigns, and marketing on social media.
Benefits of Experiential Marketing
We are emotional beings, and when a brand emotionally approaches the customers, we will be loyal to the brand and consequently buy the product. As more business emerges nowadays, experiential marketing is more important to promote the product.
The following are the key benefits of promoting the marketing campaign:
1. Campaign benefits
The campaign can gain popularity by introducing new tactics and interactions to attract customers. After the campaigns and trade events, customers will be more attracted, and a few percent will trust the product, and the other few will buy the product.
Loyalty between the customer and the brand can be created by directly creating communication between the customers.
2. A new way of experience
Experiential marketing brings more awareness to the customers by directly dealing with them. Non-traditional marketing methods are used to enhance the effects of marketing. Attention will be brought up to the customers to help them remember the brand.
Introducing different ideas and installing new methodology in marketing will attract the customers. Experiential marketing is the best way to introduce new tactics and marketing techniques to pull up the consumers.
3. Attracts people to other media
Social media is a powerful tool and the best in all marketing. But experiential marketing made social media marketing even more powerful. When a campaign is on air, and when the consumers attend the event, they will automatically utilize the social media platform to write content about the product. People posting photos on social media will be a free promotion of the product. So experiential marketing is a root base of social media to promote the product.
4. Brand interaction
To create positivity in the brand, customers need to interact with the brand. Participating in the campaign and trade events would be good fun and will be a memorable one. So that loyalty is built in every customer to fall for the product.
What to Avoid in Experiential Marketing?
Experiential marketing would be a great hit if planned successfully and installed. And if not designed with goals and budget, it would surely blow you off. Many companies and business owners would try experiential marketing as it is trending. But with proper planning and research, this marketing cannot be executed, or it would be a definite failure.
Too much sales pitch should be avoided, as it may lower your brand. As experiential marketing is still a novice to most business owners and other marketers, proper research and planning should be done to gain a successful brand sale.
The key tips to be avoided while campaigning experiential marketing are:
1. Picturing experiential marketing only as a strategy
Just displaying the campaign and installing trade events will not be a great sale to a product. The conversation will be the only magic created to communicate between the consumers. When communication is engaged between the marketers and the customers, people do understand the product’s benefits and will try to buy the product.
Personal interaction and unforgettable memories should be created to reach customers.
2. Avoid pleasing everyone
Customers mostly want personalized brand interactions, so targeting audiences with more likable events can be installed. Pleasing everyone will not be a good go, so customers don’t fall for the more exaggerated product. Refining the audience with what they expect should always be specific. Personalizing customer interactions brings more positive hope to the marketing campaign.
3. Underestimating the time
Experiential marketing is not like online marketing, posting pictures and writing content about brands. It is installing the events and campaigns in the right place and at the right time. More planning, research, and goals have to be set to create experiential marketing. Trained employees, more phone calls, and proper planning are the key elements of experiential marketing.
4. Failing to track the event performance
Social media marketing can instantly track the promotions, posts, and comments on what is going on in their brand’s campaign. As experiential marketing goes for a live event, the marketers fail to note the event’s performance.
To attain success in delivering the product in the campaign, the marketers have to record the event performance. The marketers should track the customers’ social media response and overall attendance.
5. Implementing a poor budget
The budget has to be planned accordingly to attract customers when installing an event. Brands must plan and invest in supplies, hundreds of man-hours, technologies, etc. Preplanning the budget with more supplies to conduct a good event is more important.
Conclusion
The output will be fun and perfect when experiential marketing goes well with fun-filled events. Improper planning, research failure, budget planning, and time failures may mislead the entire marketing, which may collapse the brand name. Every time new tactics and innovations have to be brought up to attract customers. Proper planning and research will be the only key points for successful experiential marketing.
Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
