Experiential marketing allows customers to experience your brand’s products. According to an EventTrack research report in 2021, 40% of consumers said they felt more brand loyalty and 91% were more likely to purchase the product or service after participating in a brand experience or interaction. This type of marketing creates a memory that will stick with customers forever. Here is everything you need to know to begin your next experiential marketing campaign.
Successful Experiential Marketing Campaigns
To help give you an idea of how experiential marketing works and can help your brand, it’s good to look at campaign examples that saw success.
Stranger Things: The hit Netflix show has brought fans into the world of stranger things with their Stranger Things: The Experience campaign, in New York, San Francisco, London, and more. Some actors even made surprise appearances to really build an in-person relationship with their fans.
Etsy: For last year’s holiday season, Etsy got creative and hosted an experiential marketing campaign from the comfort of your own home. The Etsy House was an immersive and shoppable experience where customers could virtually walk through the home and see all the beautiful Etsy items displayed properly in the home.
Zappos/Google: In 2015, Google hit the streets of Austin, Texas, to promote its new photo app. Google set up a food truck giving out cupcakes; all participants had to do was pay with a photo from the app. Once Zappos got wind of this, they began their own campaign right next to Google’s truck. To receive gifts like watches, headphones, sunglasses, backpacks, and gift cards, participants simply had to pay with a cupcake. Fans got a kick out of it and both companies benefited.
Lean Cuisine: In Lean Cuisine’s #weighthis campaign, the brand put full focus on the messaging. Nobody tried the product when the frozen dinner company popped up at Grand Central Station. Women were given a scale. Rather than being weighed by pounds, they were given the ability to say how they wanted to be weighed, whether that be their job as a nurse, graduating college at 38, their relationship as a mother and wife, surviving breast cancer, or the places that they have traveled. Lean Cuisine took the focus off diets and numbers on the scale. They instead created a display of women’s accomplishments written on scales to weigh their accomplishments.
How to Create Your Own Campaign
- Establish Goals
- What are you looking to achieve? Have clear metrics in mind to measure the campaign’s performance.
- Get Creative!
- This is a great time for a brainstorm session. Be strategic and stay on budget. Think from the perspective of the customer and keep brand messaging consistent.
- Plan and Organize
- Test out key parts of your campaign. Book a location, round up brand ambassadors and influencers. Debrief the entire team and spread the word on social media, in the news, on your website, and via email.
- Showtime!
- Showcase your event live on social media, have other media contacts present and encourage participants to spread the word. Also be sure to keep monitoring the event and the safety of your participants.
- Analyze
- Evaluate the campaign and assess your results. Keep the conversation going on social media with a branded hashtag.
Benefits of Experiential Marketing
This strategy also offers the opportunity for customer insights, especially at events like trade shows or product sampling. When in person customers are more likely and more comfortable to ask questions and offer feedback. At an event you can study your customers and how they interact with your product. Look at what they struggle with, what they enjoy, what sparks a smile, or strikes confusion. This will help you make the necessary improvements you need to make to your product and make it more user friendly.
Experiential marketing plays on the senses bringing your brand to life. This strategy offers great opportunities and loyal customers. Whether your campaign is playful, entertaining, educational, or inspirational, your customers will remember the experience forever.
Looking for a creative team for your next product launch? Contact us today to get your next marketing campaign up and running.