Experiential Marketing: How it Works and Best Practices
What is experiential marketing?
Experiential marketing, also referred to as engagement marketing, differs from traditional marketing efforts by providing the audience with an opportunity to actually experience a brand.
Well-known experiential marketing efforts include Disney’s Doc McStuffin’s Check-Up campaign that let over 8,000 kids play doctor and Lean Cuisine’s #WeighThis campaign that let women publicly voice the things they want to be measured by (actions, duties, etc.) rather than their weight. This campaign left a whopping 204 million total impressions on its audience.
What are its benefits?
While this marketing campaign offers a lot of fun and creative ways for companies to engage with their customers, they also serve to foster brand trust and loyalty while creating a community.
Data clearly demonstrates that experiential marketing can deliver an audience reaction that simply can’t be achieved through traditional marketing efforts. 91% of consumers reported more positive feelings toward a brand after an event, and 85% said they were more likely to buy their product.
Best Practices
Many companies that are considering how best to incorporate experiential marketing into their overall strategy struggle with developing a plan that will deliver a great experience. And for every success story, there is another one that shows how experiential marketing can go wrong.
For instance, take Jägermeister’s famous pool party in Mexico where they wanted to add fake fog to the party. They didn’t consider that the pool chlorine and liquid nitrogen displace oxygen, leading to many attendees getting sick and having to go to the hospital. One participant even ended up in a coma.
These failures underscore the importance of properly planning an experiential marketing event, which often means marketers have to take into account issues that they normally wouldn’t.
Some key tips for doing this successfully include:
Set clear goals and outcomes. Make sure you have a way to measure and analyze this data.
Know your audience. This is the only way to develop an experience that they will enjoy.
Understand how you want to connect with the audience. Experiential marketing works best with it evokes emotion, appeals to the senses and provides a memorable event. Incorporate these features into your event.
Make it exciting. This should be fun, and it should inspire a sense of discovery. But be sure to balance this with safety, which should not be forgotten!
Provide samples. This is a time when you have the customer exactly where you want them. They are feeling good about the product and are more open to trying it than at any other time. Giving a sample will often lead to a committed customer.
Be as interactive as you can be. This can be done by incorporating games or competitions or inviting your audience to share information about themselves. This gives them the opportunity to feel valued.
Maximize participation. This can be done by increasing exposure through social media or other channels.
Take the opportunity to inform and educate about your brand. And not just the products or services, but also what you stand for.
Experiential marketing is gaining traction because it works. It is a way to creatively connect with an audience on a deeper level.
This is a crucial strategy in today’s hyper-competitive market that is marked by consumer disinterest in traditional advertising. When done well, experiential marketing can be a huge part of the overall customer journey, especially for new customers.