What Is Experiential Marketing? The Ability To Impact All Five Senses
As audiences become smarter, brands have to figure out newer ways to market their products or service. However, they need to sell their product without selling. With so many marketing tactics being redundant, many well-established brands have adopted a new approach to create awareness about their product called “Experiential Marketing.”
Unlike conventional or digital, experiential marketing is a way to impact all five senses of the audience and build an experience around the product. Experiential marketing is known to create memorable moments, spark emotions, and engage all five senses of the potential customer. Experiential marketing allows brands to show their product or service in a way that was never possible before. Moreover, instead of just viewing an advertisement or learning about a product, customers have the opportunity to experience the product before they buy.
What Is Digital Experiential Marketing?
Digital, experiential marketing uses online methods to promote and engage new customers. Furthermore, digital, experiential marketing consists of engaging with customers in a live setting. However, sometimes, a brand’s potential customers can’t be present in a single location. In this situation, digital experiential marketing comes to help.
Numerous companies have used digital experiential marketing tactics to boost their brand awareness. Moreover, experiential marketing helps consumers connect with a brand and strengthens brand loyalty. For example, Ben & Jerry used digital experiential marketing in 2011 to win brand-loyal customers. The company reached out to its customers on Twitter and asked them to tweet what they wanted for free. When the customers did, a Ben & Jerry truck would come to their home and deliver the desired ice cream. This was Ben & Jerry’s way of reaching out to its customers and building a connection.
Similarly, many brands had the same approach to increasing brand awareness. They utilized technology and helped their customers experience their product. For example, Coca-Cola is a well-known brand that focuses on marketing, and it’s a pioneer in coming up with innovative ways of connecting with its customers. In 2009, Coca-Cola came up with its “small world campaign” and followed it by “hug me” vending machines. These creative gestures by well-established brands allow customers to feel more close to the brand. Moreover, these marketing tactics rely on emotions that unite people under one platform.
Several other brands use digital, experiential marketing to win over new and old customers, and Coca-Cola is one of them. Moreover, according to trade magazines, 77% of marketers use experiential marketing to boost their brand awareness. This number only widens when we discuss digital experiential marketing.
Importance of Experiential Marketing
Experiential marketing is becoming increasingly popular as brands try to discover newer and creative ways of approaching the customer. Experiential marketing sets a benchmark for competition, shows brand value, making them aware of who they are up against.
1. It Works
One of the reasons for the popularity of experiential marketing is that it works. According to research, many people immediately buy the product after the experiential market, while others become loyal customers. The best example of experiential marketing is a company putting its product for trial before asking customers to buy it. For example, perfume brands always use experiential marketing because no one will buy a perfume without smelling it.
2. It Gives Consumers A New Way To Experience A Brand
Experiential marketing is the extension of a brand’s promise. Moreover, unlike conventional marketing, experiential marketing affects the audience’s five senses. Plus, it generates an authentic brand experience for the consumer through nontraditional marketing techniques. Experiential marketing is known to leave a lasting impact and create memories for customers to remember.
3. It Appeals To The New Ways People Use Social Media
Social media is the cornerstone of marketing these days. Anything worth recording is posted on social media and shared online. This online behavior has given brands the leverage of word-of-mouth marketing where they can expect their experiential marketing stunts to go viral. Customers who enjoy sharing an experience with a product or service tend to record it on their mobile devices. When these short clips of interactions with a brand are shared online, they gain momentum and go viral globally. That’s the power of social media that can uplift a brand and spread its content worldwide without much investment.
4. It Gives A Chance to Connect With The Brand
Experiential marketing builds around the experiences of customers about the brand. It allows audiences to try out the product before they purchase it. For instance, audiences can try perfumes before buying, but this doesn’t create an “experience” with the brand; instead, it’s product trial marketing. The best examples of experiential marketing are different from testing a perfume off the shelf. Instead, it’s a unique marketing methodology that shares parts of trial product marketing; however, it connects with masses of consumers on a grand level.
Importance of Digital Experiential Marketing
Experiential marketing is a full-blown success strategy, and there is no doubt about it. However, without the aid of digital marketing, its efforts seem in vain. After all, no matter big and bold a brand goes, if people aren’t aware of the whereabouts of its event, no one will show up. Hence, digital experiential marketing is a whole new level of combining conventional marketing with digitalization. But, many other factors explain the importance of digital, experiential marketing.
1. Extends An Events Lifespan
Not only can social media promote an event before it happens, but it can also keep the conversation going around it. Many successful events have been broadcast on social media during the pandemic. People have become a part of these events from the comforts of their homes. Social media has evolved from being a platform for connecting to a place where brands can build their awareness and promote their services. Social media can create an ongoing buzz around your brand. People share pictures and videos of the event, keeping your brand in the limelight for a long time. Without social media, all of this wouldn’t be possible.
2. Decreased Cost-Per-Touch
Digital experiential marketing is a cornerstone of today’s world. Most people spend nearly half of their day on social media. Therefore, targeting potential customers has become easier. However, brands are looking to build a connection with their customers, and it is not possible without digital, experiential marketing. The role of digitalization in experiential marketing is spreading the word about a brand and its product.
By getting people to talk about your experiential marketing event, you not only gain word-of-mouth marketing but also boost brand awareness in the process. Moreover, experiential marketing events can be digitalized and shared on social media as well. This way, more people can participate and be a part of a memorable experience. When video and pictures are shared over the internet organically, it decreases cost per touch, and brands gain greater reach without much investment in digital marketing.
3. Increased ROI
Marketing is all about garnering attention, and digital experiential marketing is the new way of capturing the audience’s attention. With little effort, brands can share their content with millions of viewers and boost their brand awareness significantly. Moreover, the decreased cost per touch is also a factor in increasing return on investment because when an event is talked about over social media, it increases its sales. After all, more people are learning about it.
Tips for Powerful Digital Experiential Marketing
Now that you have learned the importance of digital experiential marketing, it’s time to learn some quick tips to help you successfully manage a digital experiential marketing campaign.
1. Have Audience Data
Sponsoring an experiential marketing event without knowing about your attendee is an amateur move. Make sure you have adequate information about the attendees of your event so that you can decorate and design things according to them. Moreover, some platforms can gather more data about the attendees during the event, which can be used in retargeting and email marketing campaigns. Plus, after the event, you can use the data collected and reach out to your attendees on a personal level with a customized message that triggers emotions and memories of your experiential marketing event.
2. Create A Hashtag
Creating hashtags is the best way to go viral with a video, picture, or post. Social media is hungry for trending posts, and if your brand is on the trend list, even just for a day, you can receive a lot of attention. Use this attention to your leverage and invite people to your experiential marketing event. However, when trying to sell to these people, you might not see results as promising after your experiential marketing event. This is because once customers have experienced your brand and product, selling would be a piece of cake with customer data. Moreover, the customer acceptance rate will be much higher because you will be targeting customers instead of bringing in new ones.
3. Incentivize Engagements
Your primary goal is to spread your digital experiential marketing event as much as possible. Of course, you can choose different techniques for it. Still, the simplest way of generating engagement is by incentivizing ‘like’ and ‘share.’ You can offer a small reward that can be won through a lucky draw, and to enter, customers will have to like, share, and comment on your brand’s post. This way, you will generate viral reach as the majority of your engagements are organic.
4. Interact With Attendees
You need to interact with your potential customers at all points to keep them interested in your event. Although you might have many people on your event page, not all of them will show up to your experiential marketing event. However, the best way to have maximum footfall at your event is by engaging with your attendees before the event starts. You can ask about design and decoration and inform people about what they can expect from your event. Moreover, sharing information about the brand’s origins also helps because when attendees can relate to a story, they are more inclined towards that particular brand.
5. Monitor Results
The best thing about social media is that you can post multiple pictures and videos at a time. Moreover, the Facebook Live feature is also an amazing tool to spread the news about your brand. Many social media influencers are leveraging this feature and increasing their followers. Your brand can also broadcast its experiential marketing event on Facebook and garner attention. However, if you don’t monitor results, you won’t know how successful were your efforts.
You can see a quick view of engagements and views underneath your post or have a detailed look at the people who interacted with your brand. The detailed view puts a clear picture of your customers and their demographics, psychographics, and other details. Brands can use this information in retargeting campaigns and boost their marketing efforts. Finally, monitoring results allow brands to make informed decisions and view their potential customers’ behavior.
The Bottom Line
Experiential marketing is a step beyond conventional marketing, which creates a memorable experience for customers and takes them on a journey to explore a particular brand.
Experiential marketing allows customers to feel, use, see and try a brand’s product in the most creative way possible — digital experiential marketing is a combination of digitalization and experience marketing. Digitalization acts as a support system that spreads awareness about an experiential marketing event. However, sometimes experiential marketing events are broadcasted digitally.
Regardless of how these events are planned and delivered, the important fact is that brands have gained new and valuable customers through experiential marketing. This is because when customers use a product, their likelihood of buying that product is amplified.
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