What is Experiential Marketing?
What is the need to visit a live concert when one can listen to the same song at home? What is the basic distinction between going to the stadium to watch a sports game? And watching the game live on television?
In just a word, it is the experience that you get.
There is something viscerally distinct about participating in a manner. That permits you to become a part of an event as opposed to witnessing the same through the technological conduit.
The unique blend of sounds, sights, textures, smells & tastes all add to create the viewers experience amazing, which is impossible to avail by other means.
However, while various brands, especially those linked with sports are anxious to jump into the experiential bandwagon. There are many that are still facing struggles to understand the ground rules of experiential marketing.
Owing to this particular reason, we have created a handy step by step guide where we will go through almost all you require knowing about how to do experiential marketing.
What exactly makes the concept of experiential marketing this powerful?
The core concept of experiential marketing is about creating meaningful relationships between customers and brands. More than promoting a particular product to passive customers, experiential marketing is designed to keep customers actively engaged with the brand’s identity & their core values.
Note that 74% of customers state that engaging with a branded event marketing. Experiences help them to purchase goods being promoted.
For a consumer or customer, experiential marketing offers them a great opportunity to communicate directly & build completely meaningful relationships with brands.
Even if one has an event that caters greatly to several people. Every person will come from an experience that is highly unique to them.
For a brand, particularly small organizations, experiential marketing is a complete golden chance to enhance consumers loyalty & direct sales.
Successful experiential marketing campaigns do not only introduce individuals to their brand but serve as a way to activate brand new consumers & introduce them in their sales funnel with 65% of brands stating that there are experiential marketing efforts that result in direct sales.
Note that beyond direct marketing, experiential marketing even caters to a way to massively enhance their brand awareness & exposure either via turning their customers into brand ambassadors or greatly encouraging the participants to share huge experiences on social media.
Research from McKinsey has found experiential marketing to be a strong catalyst for the word of mouth marketing with huge branded experiences, which accounts for 50-80% of all the word of mouth activities.
What experiential marketing is & is not?
Something that we require to be clear right from the beginning is that experiential marketing is not just event marketing or a publicity stunt.
Though there is a particular overlap between 2 & experiential marketing definitely should certainly include elements from event marketing, experiential marketing must be treated more like a long run strategy as compared to the one-off event.
Experiential marketing’s goal is to create an authentic branded episode or an experience for the customers that can be either online or offline.
To completely understand what experiential marketing is all about, we should initially focus on what makes a huge branded experience. Great branded experience must always include 3 major elements.
- Active engagement & participation from customers
- Provide a long-lasting value
- Promote the brand’s value & message
Until and unless you provide all the 3 of these major elements, you are not conducting proper experiential marketing. Let us take a deep dive into the 3 points.
1) Highly active engagement & participation
The initial step of any good branded experience is to permit your customers to actively engage with the brand. This means anything from capturing a photo & sharing it on media platforms to participating in carnival games.
Just take a look at the campaign set by the brand Milka. This included the production of ten million chocolate bars with a piece missing. Those customers who were confused were directed towards dedicated microsites & were given a choice.
They either could have a chocolate piece that was sent to them or pass it on to their loved ones. Just by asking their consumers to conduct this easy action, Milka gave their customers the opportunity to communicate with them easily in a meaningful & thoughtful manner that would not have been otherwise possible.
2) Brand’s message & values promotion
A good brand experience does not restrict to just promoting a particular product. It is also linked with conveying a good message and values. It is not adequate to just simply narrate to your customers why a specific brand is good. As it may not always get the message. However, allowing them to face it on their own will make sure. That the communication will stay with them for several years to come.
A good example of this is the launch of the store called D Rose Jump in London.
This campaign included having Derrick Rose. An NBA superstar to open the store and also to create a ten-foot-high shelf. That carried various pairs of Derrick’s signature sneakers.
If there is anyone who can make the ten-foot jump & reach the signature sneakers, they have the option of taking them home.
This specific simple occasion gave each participant a chance to get an insight into the life of top-notch basketball players & also promoted Adidas’s message of peak performance & athleticism.
3) Provide a long-lasting value
Lastly, a good branded experience is one that caters for a long-lasting value to their audience. It is a part that most brands fail at when it is about experiential marketing as they concentrate entirely on providing short term value.
A good branded experience is the one that remains with the participants & encourages a continued brand interaction for a long.
For instance, Lululemon, an athleisure brand, who popularly utilizes numerous experiential marketing campaigns to promote their brand held a complimentary yoga class for their audience within the chosen retail store.
Such classes gave Lululemon an opportunity to communicate directly & build an authentic and long-lasting relationship with their audience.
However, most importantly, by catering to this kind of value they wanted to share an experience. Which was relevant to their audience. This experience actually made a mark on the audience’s mind.
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