Are you looking for new ways to engage with your audience? Tired of sophisticated marketing strategies that deliver sub-par results?
You might want to try experiential marketing!
Today, many marketers are driven by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics and have almost forgotten about creating a personal experience with their customers.
The problem is, when you make content for search engines rather than for people, you miss an opportunity to know your audience on a personal level. Real marketing isn’t defined by keywords and rankings. It’s defined by customer engagement!
And that’s what experiential marketing is all about. It aims to create an emotional bond between the audience and the brand through immersive events.
And it works!
According to PWC research, 70% of consumers consider an excellent customer experience key to customer loyalty. This article will introduce you to experiential marketing and explain why it’s so important for your business.
What Is Experiential Marketing?
Picture this; between watching football at the stadium and streaming it live on TV, which one would you prefer?
Most people would prefer being at the stadium—even though doing so will incur additional costs. Why? It all comes down to experience.
Participating allows you to become a part of something instead of merely watching it through digital media. The distinctive combination of sights, smell, sound, and personal interactions create a unique experience that you cannot get with other means.
And that experience is what people pay for.
Experiential marketing seeks to bring out that kind of experience to consumers. It’s an all-encompassing term used to describe marketing and advertising activities that focus on consumer experience.
Simply put, experiential marketing is a strategy that focuses on engaging the customer through branded experiences. The idea is to make customers experience something tangible and associate with your brand or products.
For example, suppose you own a small company that sells ice cream in Dallas. You’ve introduced a new flavour and want more people to buy it.
One way to do that is to promote the new ice cream flavour on social media or run ads on Google. However, this may not deliver your desired results because, often, people are wary of buying things they aren’t familiar with.
The second approach is to leverage experiential marketing. Instead of running ads on Google, you can put up a stall outside your shop and invite people to try the new ice cream flavour for free. If people love the new flavour, they’ll buy more and even invite their friends. That’s the true power of experiential marketing!
Note that experiential marketing isn’t limited to traditional marketing methods. Virtual tours, business events, retreats, software demos, and other forms of digital marketing that create an interactive experience all fall under the experiential marketing umbrella.
Importance of Experiential Marketing
Without further ado, here are the benefits of experiential marketing.
- It Creates Brand Awareness & Perception
Novel ideas easily catch interest because they’re unique. Likewise, experiential marketing gets peoples’ attention quickly, thus creating brand awareness.
Savvy marketers use events to engage customers more and create a memorable experience in the customer’s mind. According to EventMarketer, over 90% of consumers feel more positive towards a brand after attending its events.
- It Helps to Establish Lasting Relationships
As mentioned earlier, experiential marketing aims to create an emotional bond between the customers and the brand through events.
Your customers get the rare opportunity to meet and interact with the team who work behind the scenes to deliver the products they love. This personal interaction creates a strong relationship that leads to brand advocacy.
- It Facilitates Word of Mouth Marketing
As humans, we love to share our experiences—both good and bad. The same applies to the experiences we get with products/services.
Experiential marketing lays the groundwork for word-of-mouth marketing. When customers interact with your brand or products, they’ll likely share their experiences with their friends and even post them on social networks.
And since 92% of customers believe in the recommendations they receive from their friends and colleagues; word-of-mouth marketing can go a long way in driving more sales for your business.
In Summary
Experiential marketing is a great way to promote your products and interact with your audience on a personal level. It’s an engaging tactic with the power to capture customers’ attention and make them feel like they’re part of something big.
When done right, experiential marketing can create brand awareness, facilitate word-of-mouth marketing, and lead to meaningful, long-term relationships.
