Experiential marketing

Experiential marketing is a strategy that implies face-to-face communication with a target audience and involves people’s experience with a brand or its products. It aims to shape memorable emotional connections with customers, increasing brand awareness and customer loyalty.

In this article, we’ll explore why companies implement experiential marketing and explore its types and examples. Next, we’ll uncover how to create an experiential marketing strategy.

marketing">Why do brands use experiential marketing?

This marketing strategy easily attracts and engages people by using interactive methods and ensures an unforgettable experience. Businesses utilize the technique and communicate with their consumers face-to-face to establish emotional connections, lasting memories, positive impressions, etc. Eventually, it improves clients’ relationships with a brand and customer lifetime value.

The method requires organizing various offline events such as samplings, in-store activities, shows, events, and product showcases that help a brand interact with customers, better understand their needs and problems, obtain valuable customer insights, and establish strong relationships with their audience.

Experiential marketing brings several benefits to businesses:

• involving leads and customers in different types of activities;
• introducing a brand and its product to prospects and customers to let them try it;
• improving customer loyalty;
• increasing awareness about a certain company;

Now that you know the advantages of experiential marketing, it’s time to jump into its types.

marketing_campaigns">4 Types of Experiential Marketing Campaigns

We can differentiate four main types of campaigns:

• guerrilla marketing (relies heavily on unconventional methods and often includes the effect of surprise, interactive emotions, risk, and provocativeness);
• brand activation (involves an event or any other type of interaction that encourages customers to act);
• event marketing (entails a display, presentation, or themed exhibit to provide the audience with an unforgettable experience);
• retail installations (POP marketing is about a smart placement of products in retail stores that aims at their promotion).

Let’s proceed to the next section to explore our guide to creating an experiential marketing strategy.

marketing_campaign">How to Develop an Experiential Marketing Strategy

You should have a proper strategy to entice customers to visit your offline event. We’ll provide you with the necessary steps to develop one for your company.

• Understand your target audience. Some companies direct all their efforts to create something unique, unforgettable, and fun and forget about the most important element — their target audience. That’s why your company’s marketing and sales team should have enough time to research your ideal buyers and the type of advertising they prefer the most at the planning stage. As a result, you’ll know your audience’s interests, preferences, and needs and will be able to comply with them when communicating face-to-face.
• Create and communicate a clear message. When thinking about an appropriate message, make sure that it aligns with your brand’s communication style and enables customers to build strong associations. 
• Develop a campaign that provides value. When developing an experiential campaign, keep in mind that you need to provide some value. A campaign is successful if it manages to educate its target audience and bring something beneficial.
• Leverage augmented reality. People always want to try something on before purchasing it: clothes, sunglasses, shoes, or furniture to be sure that the item meets their requirements perfectly. Augmented reality apps enable customers to virtually try out everything they need and find out whether a product fits.
• Create an engaging campaign. To reach the public, you should develop a unique campaign that brings a lot of fun and encourages people to participate.
• Endorse your campaign across multiple channels. To get more brand exposure and increase engagement, you need to distribute the information about your campaign across different marketing channels. Focus on the ones your target audience prefers the most. You can reach the masses by promoting your event on social media or using ambient marketing.
• Encourage customers to disseminate information. Once you launch your new campaign, inspire people to share their photos and videos from your event on social media and forums to become word-of-mouth promoters of your company. It will help you reach even more people and attain the goal of your campaign.

Now that you know how to develop a great strategy, let’s explore some examples.

marketing_examples">Examples of Experiential Marketing

Everything in business and marketing is built on connections and experiences. They establish brand loyalty and make campaigns successful. Let’s now find out how established brands build relationships with the public.

Red Bull

For many years people have associated Red Bull with extreme sports. However, in 2012, the brand reached a new level of success when it launched the “Stratos” campaign. Its main goal was to break a new skydiving record with Felix Baumgartner. By streaming the event online on YouTube, the company obtained more than eight million viewers.

Vans

The brand found another way to surprise its fans. It decided to create several pop-up locations in big cities like Chicago and New York. The famous manufacturer of shoes provided skateboarders with great spots to meet up, communicate, and listen to music. Skatepark-based pop-ups also served as a place where Vans presented its new shoe line.

Congrats, now you know the benefits, types, and examples of experiential marketing. Use our guide to create engaging offline events and in-store experiences.