Looking for some tips for creating the best experiential marketing campaign?
The term ‘Marketing’ is incredibly broad. It encompasses a huge variety of methods and tactics. One of the most effective marketing tools to communicate with customers happens to be through creating an experience for them, a la experiential marketing. Simply put, hands on experience with a product is second to none.
Don’t be confused; experiential marketing is not just event marketing. Allowing your customers to truly experience; see, touch and feel is what experiential marketing is all about. The best experiential marketing campaign is one that attempts to address as many senses as possible.
So what helps to deliver the best possible campaign? Here are 5 Tips to help launch the best experiential marketing campaign:
1. Your Brand is You, Know your Brand!
Before design, before organization, even before contacting potential channels define your brand. This is a must since it will be the baseline for the best experiential marketing campaign. Know what you do and who you are. Be able to clarify this to everyone involved in the campaign and you’re guaranteed to receive the results you want.
2. In-Line Team Transparency
Now that your brand is clearly defined, relaying that image to your team is essential. Any confusion, inaccurate or faulty brand messages will show up in the end product. All outbound marketing including paper ads, radio ads, and commercials as well as inbound marketing such as social media, blogs and websites should be clearly conveyed to the potential team. This will ensure your brand image can be transferred to a potential customer in a clear and concise manner.
3. Strength in Numbers
Experiential marketing campaigns are like diets; unless you stick to them they are not effective. One campaign will not leave a lasting impression. You don’t want to be “that place that was at that show that one time”. Be the company that “owns” that show. Consumers will become familiar with you while you create an experience they won’t forget and they look forward to. Besides, you went through the time and effort to create a great experiential marketing campaign; it would be a shame to let it all go to waste.
4. Leverage Social Media
It can never be repeated enough, social media is key! Social media is the strongest tool for you to reach your target audience. An event may bring plenty of foot traffic, the guest list may be huge but your target audience is still almost all online. Promote yourself before, after, and during the event through social media management. “Connect with us through Facebook”, “fill out your email for future promotions”, “check out full list of products on our blog”, these are all potential ways to increase your brand awareness and potential customer base when utilizing an experiential marketing campaign.
5. Feedback is Payment
Potential customer reactions, expectations, and satisfactions are all a result of experiential campaigns and should not be ignored. Whether the response is good or bad, it gives you to improve or revamp your message within a relatively short period of time with reduced uncertainty. All this take away can then be reapplied at the next event to further narrow down and gain potential customers. Brands have been known to create TV commercials based around the responses they received from experiential marketing programs.