How Does Experiential Marketing Work?

There’s a lot of buzz around the idea of experiential marketing at the moment. It’s the latest in a long line of marketing techniques and, like many other strategies, there is some scepticism around its efficiency. After all, experiential marketing doesn’t tend to use traditional marketing outlets like TV or radio to reach new customers. If you’re considering experiential marketing but are hesitant to take the next step, then this post might be able to help you.

Experiential marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on engaging with consumers and encouraging their participation in a brand experience. This makes it different from more traditional types of advertising, which tended to rely on brands selling particular products and services to their customers. With experiential marketing, you’re selling a feeling, an emotional connection between customers and brands. This builds a relationship between the two which can lead to brand loyalty in the future. But, it also means that you have to shift the entire focus of your marketing strategy, which can be intimidating. 

So, Why is it so Effective?

There are many reasons why experiential marketing has proven itself to be a popular and effective form of marketing. One of the biggest is that users are, fundamentally, emotional beings. There is an innate desire for emotional connection and, if you plan your strategy right, your business can fill this desire. The best way to do this is by involving your customers in your story. Crafting a story, especially the company’s story, around your customer means they feel connected to you rather than sold to; a part of a brand rather than just another statistic.

You can see the effectiveness of this sort of advertising in many different campaigns these days. Like the Compare the Market campaign involving the meerkats. While this started off as just a short advert making a joke about meerkats sounding like markets, it has snowballed into a full storyline with a variety of different adverts being released to continue this story. 

Additionally, websites, plush toys and other merchandise had been created for this campaign, further drawing in and entertaining a customer base. The idea isn’t that the customer immediately rushes to Compare the Market, it is ensuring that they will be the first brand in their mind when the customer is looking to renew their car or home insurance. 

What Should you Avoid in an Experiential Campaign?

Experiential marketing can be transformational for your brand and have a really positive impact on your annual profits. But that doesn’t mean that it is easy nor that the success will just fall into your lap because you’re trying this strategy. There are certain pitfalls that you’ll want to avoid and one of the biggest is spreading your target audience too wide. 

This is the key to an effective experiential marketing campaign. If you get this wrong then it doesn’t matter how cool your ideas are, you’ll miss the mark. You will need to make sure that you know who you’re advertising to and what they want from you. Take some time to properly research your target audience before you make any decisions. This research will properly prepare you and stop the entire problems from blowing up in your face. 

Different audiences want different things and the last thing you want to be doing is advertising your over-60s life insurance on an app like TikTok using some sort of personalised filter. While this might get you a lot of attention from the younger audience on the platform, it won’t gain much traction amongst your target audience, many of whom probably don’t use TikTok.

Here at Brand Culture, we specialise in experiential marketing and we would be happy to help you create your perfect campaign. To learn more about our marketing strategies and how we can collaborate together, feel free to get in touch with us today.