In today’s digital age, marketing tactics take on many shapes and forms. With an increasing amount of consumers doing their shopping and socializing online, it only seems logical that marketing budgets are spent in parallel… right?
Wrong!
Well, to an extent that is; in an increasingly digital era, consumers are longing for personal connection and a customized experience from their favourite brands. Meaning that while the consumer journey may begin or end online, experiential marketing brings in a critical emotional connection.
So what exactly is experiential marketing?
Just as the name suggests, its marketing tactics that create an experience for consumers through live and in-person events. It creates a channel for consumers to connect with the brand on an emotional level and go beyond traditional marketing tactics.
Whereas an advertisement may evoke particular emotions out of your consumers, experiential marketing offers the opportunity for your consumers to see, hear, touch and feel the brand. It provides a unique experience that your consumers would not otherwise undergo.
What does experiential marketing do for me?
1. Make your brand standout from the rest
In a world with hundreds of thousands of brands, it can be difficult to make yours standout from the rest. Through experiential marketing, you’re able to bring creativity and something different to an otherwise crowded market. While majority of brands are now engaged in digital and social marketing, not all partake in experiential marketing. This gives your brand an opportunity to be different and have a voice that speaks volumes over the competition.
2. Create an emotional connection between your brand and consumer
By bringing a unique experience directly to your consumer, you’re allowing them to engage with the brand in a way they would have never been able to otherwise. When consumers can physically experience a brand with all their senses, it creates a much more in-depth connection between them and the company’s value proposition.
In addition, by bringing an experience directly to the consumers, it now gives you the ability to interact with them face-to-face. With digital marketing taking the forefront, it lacks the ability to be able to be have a live in-person conversation with your consumer.
Consumers are typically much more inclined to return to your brand if they have had a positive person-to-person interaction.
3. Experiential marketing lives beyond offline
While you may be thinking that an experiential campaign begins and ends with the live activation, think again! Although the actual campaign may be live for only an extended period of time, a successful experiential campaign will live both online and offline. By incorporating social sharing features into your activation, it can bring the campaign to life online.
Consumers love to take and share photos of themselves and their friends on social media #doitfortheinsta. So by making a memorable and shareable experience, it gives your brand free grassroots advertising that may otherwise be hard to get in traditional digital marketing.
4. Micro-target specific audiences with experiential marketing
When making the choice to bring an experience directly to your consumers, experiential marketing allows you to micro-target specific audiences. For example, if you’re trying to reach millennials who skateboard, perhaps you may bring a live experience directly to an outdoor skatepark. The benefit is that you get to put yourself directly into the consumers environment and therefore intercept them in an organic way.
5. Experiential marketing is FUN!
There are only so many opportunities where consumers can share an experience with your brand and this is one of them! Bringing a unique and fun experience is surely to resonate in the minds of your consumers for a long-time. As a result, they will be much more likely to repeat purchase from your brand!
If you want to connect with your consumers on an emotional level, create a campaign that lives both online and offline, micro-target specific audiences and bring forth a fun campaign then experiential marketing is waiting for you!
Find out how Lash Vision Media can help plan your next experiential event now!