Experiential marketing is a marketing strategy aimed at impressing customers. For this very reason, it is also known as engagement marketing.
Leaning on experiential marketing helps organizations make lasting impressions, as opposed to one-time interactions. Customers are encouraged to get involved instead of passively interacting with your advertisements.
Because of the latter, experiential marketing comes in various guises and allows for a creative approach. The key is in creating the right atmosphere (think in terms of festivals) to create a venerable personal experience for everyone involved.
Nowadays, new tech has enabled businesses to stage any kind of event — virtual included. However, for virtual events, it is critical to segment the audience as these events don’t offer the range of possibilities live events do.
E.g., streaming services have brought virtual events to perfection; they target only the audience interested in the stream and don’t leave anything to chance.
Aim for Personalized Experience
The simplest way to deliver a perfect experience is to ask your customers for their preferences. Feedback has gone ways in propping up marketing, so there’s no reason not to use it in this context as well.
A unique experience creates lasting impressions in addition to leaving people yearning for more. Each successful experimental marketing campaign you deliver will bring more engagement and additional customers and subscribers.
Experimental marketing doesn’t have to necessarily deliver grandiose events alone. As a matter of fact, small businesses usually need to team up with other organizations to increase their outreach and invest in expensive events.
Small-scale events can also do wonders, especially for niche-specific brands.
Anything that can help the effort is welcome: hashtags, photo competitions, tagging…
Experimental Marketing Vs Event Marketing
Contrary to popular belief, experimental marketing isn’t synonymous with event marketing. In fact, the first can be applied even to common marketing efforts (e.g., pop-ups), while the latter focuses on the event per se.
By contrast, experimental marketing puts focus on interactions between customers and the brand.
Experimental Marketing Event Types of Interest
Given that virtual events also count, we’ll limit the list to the most successful events that can pass for experimental marketing.
Pop-up Stores, Retail Installations and Product Showcase Events
Pop-up stores, retail installations, and product showcase events are great ways to showcase your products and allow visitors to interact with them. The greatest benefit of these types of events is that customers get to ask any question they may have directly.
Kind and knowledgeable hosts can do more for your business reputation than even the products you sell. In short, these events create a perfect opportunity for customers to get to know the people behind the brand.
Classes, Workshops and Presentations
Classes, workshops, and presentations are the event types certain to intrigue the attendants. Provided that you’ve segmented the audience, you can be certain that people will love it.
When brainstorming ideas, use insights to deliver a truly personalized experience everyone will enjoy. It goes without saying that the events should only provide relevant information presented in an engaging way.
These events are also the easiest to organize as they can be held in person or virtually. For businesses staging their first experimental marketing event, a virtual event of this type may go a long way in building its brand reputation (and is also inexpensive).
The key is to allow attendees to network, as networking boosts engagement considerably.
Benefits of Experiential Marketing
Product marketing can be done in various ways but experimental marketing goes much deeper in promoting the products.
By creating lasting impressions, engagement marketing is a force to be reckoned with.
As for the approaches to getting customers to interact, they depend on the impression you want to achieve. Regardless of personalized goals, businesses should strive to achieve brand recognition and customer loyalty.
As for additional benefits, they may surprise even the most experienced of marketers. Namely, different people will process events differently and create their own kind of experience. Obviously, marketers should aim for positive feelings (joy, excitement, pleasure, etc.).
Listed below are typical benefits brands can expect from experimental marketing.
Heightened Brand Awareness
Nothing boosts brand awareness better than experimental marketing. In fact, even businesses just starting out may do wonders by setting up a, say, pop-up store to promote their products.
Focus on communication and the kind of experience you want to communicate. Focus on networking. Give away leaflets. Direct visitors to your company website. Engage in meaningful communication… The list goes on!
If you’re lucky (or pick a highly anticipated event), you’ll even get media coverage for free.
Meaningful Connections
Connecting with customers is one of the biggest challenges businesses face. Experimental marketing is particularly helpful in this regard, as it encourages communication.
Engagement is key here. The more effort you put in, the greater the response will be. You can even start small (like the example from immediately above) and deepen the connection by announcing a new event on the spot.
Experimental Marketing: An Afterthought
Marketing efforts are diverse but nothing dives deeper than experimental marketing. Because people are social beings, a well-devised event aimed at engaging attendees can do more for brand awareness than a myriad of the finest email marketing campaigns.
Interactions show customers that there are people behind a business. Experimenting with events is fine as long as engagement and networking are in focus.
When done right, experimental marketing can award your business with many loyal customers. As long as you keep communication alive, your audience will keep increasing.
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