No matter how strong your product or service is, your business can’t succeed without an effective marketing strategy. That’s why it’s important to familiarize yourself with unique approaches to marketing you may not have considered. Making the right impression on customers often requires leveraging unique and dynamic methods to spread the word about your brand.
For instance, experiential marketing has been becoming more popular with consumers in recent years. As the name implies, this approach involves promoting a brand by offering customers the opportunity to participate in relevant experiences. The following points represent just a few reasons your business should consider embracing it.
Giving Customers What They Want
Consumer preferences are always changing. Recent surveys indicate people have begun to dislike many aspects of traditional advertising. They find marketing content intrusive, particularly in the digital world, where it distracts them from other tasks.
Experiential marketing represents a way to adjust to changing customer preferences. Instead of bombarding your followers with ad content, you can invite them to events they’ll genuinely enjoy. They’ll appreciate that you’re offering an experience with real value, rather than an ad which doesn’t have the same impact.
Spreading Brand Awareness
It’s entirely understandable if you’re somewhat skeptical about the potential of experiential marketing. On the one hand, customers participating in unique events will likely have fun. On the other hand, you can’t cast a wide net with this type of marketing, right? You can only make an impression on the people who actually attend the events you host.
That’s a fair assumption to make. However, it overlooks the role social media plays in spreading brand awareness.
People attending branded events are often encouraged to share their experiences on social media. This means such marketing events have an impact on people who aren’t even in attendance. Host a strong event, and your attendees will do a lot of your marketing for you.
Boosting Brand Engagement
You don’t have to simply assume these claims about the power of experiential marketing are true. Statistics back them up. According to one survey, approximately 90% of marketing experts believe experiences provide customers with “compelling brand engagement.” They’ve seen firsthand how experiential marketing yields strong relationships between brands and their followers.
Collecting Useful Information
It’s worth noting that some brands charge admission fees for their events. However, others are willing to waive such fees in exchange for personal information about those in attendance. This makes branded experiences ideal opportunities for gathering customer data. The more you know about your customers, the more effectively you can serve their needs and preferences.
Forming Bonds
Consumers are exposed to quite a bit of marketing content on a daily basis. With so many other brands distracting them, it can be difficult to make a lasting impression with a single ad.
That’s a major reason marketing experts organize experiences for their customers. With a branded experience, you can engage all five of a customer’s senses, and you can immerse them in a branded environment for a few hours (instead of showing them an ad for a few seconds). This makes it easier to forge genuine bonds with followers.
The specific nature of the events and experiences your marketing team should plan will depend on the specific nature of your business. If your product is an ecommerce apparel app, you might host a fashion show. If your product is a food delivery app, maybe you would host a tasting event, in which potential customers could sample foods from restaurants you work with. It’s important to carefully decide how you wish to use experiential marketing to your benefit.
That said, it’s also important to not overlook this form of advertising. You can no longer impress customers through traditional means alone. To truly stand out, you need to engage them dynamically.
