Making an interactive and memorable experience for your customers with experiential marketing.

Successfully advertising a brand is pretty tricky these days. You want to appeal to a large audience, be eye-catching, and more importantly be memorable enough for people to actually go and look for your product, whether in-store or online. Being incredibly informed and much smarter as a whole, today’s consumers are no longer satisfied with just an advertisement repeated on the likes of billboards or radio; they want – and deserve – more. 

It doesn’t help that most people hate ads, which makes it vital to provide consumers with creative immersive experiences that don't push the product down their throats. 

We live in a world where attention spans are significantly shorter. Where it only takes a few seconds to consume a plethora of advertising content on TikTok and Instagram. And where traditional marketing risks being considered “outdated” and just won’t cut it anymore.
The solution? Creating meaningful interactions with people through experiential marketing such as installation marketing or advertising.

Experiential marketing, also known as “engagement marketing”, is a strategic marketing technique that aims to connect a brand with an audience by developing relationships through memorable experiences. Its aim is to appeal to the five senses, making the consumer feel and experience something in that particular moment – it puts the consumer at the center. 

Experiential marketing embraces not just the face-to-face experience of the event, but also the leading up to and coming out of the experience, event, or activation. There is a current appetite for an ad-free life and experiential marketing is the perfect solution. It allows brands to “soft advertise”, meaning using non-aggressive advertising methods such as including the consumer in an experience, telling a story and allowing them to make purchasing decisions in their own time. Experiential marketing can take a variety of forms, from pop-ups to event marketing, as long as it creates an experience between brands and customers. To give you some examples of what experiential marketing entails, here are five innovative campaigns that have been creatively executed and left a lasting impression. There really are no boundaries to what one can come up with.

Read more about branded art installations.

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In the future, ad consumption will no longer be a passive activity: people want to be involved, and show a widespread desire for more interaction. In a 2018 survey conducted by EventTrack, an astonishing 91% of consumers said they had more positive feelings about brands after attending events and experiences – a figure that is going to keep rising with the impact of COVID-19. Experiential marketing allows consumers to escape from their lives, even if just for a short while. The customer experience is considered from the very start of the journey, with every aspect of this marketing strategy being planned and evaluated to ensure a thoughtful and enjoyable experience for the customer. 

 

Technology will also play a major part in the growth of experiential marketing, with VR headsets and video mapping devices increasingly being incorporated into campaigns and events. This will not only highly appeal to the newest kids on the block, Gen Alpha, the demographic cohort that succeeds Gen Z, but will also provide a unique experience for older generations who might not be as familiar with such technologies as their younger peers. Gen Alpha will be the most technology-supplied generation ever and are expected to prefer the virtual world over the real one, so it’s important for brands to consider using experiential marketing in combination with new technologies for future campaigns. One recent experiential marketing campaign that incorporated wearable VR technology was the new Harry Potter store in New York. For an affordable price, customers wearing VR headsets could roam freely through Hogwarts castle, fly through the skies of London on broomsticks, and have a go at Quidditch. Bringing dreams to life for every wizard-loving Potter fan.

See more on digital interactive installations.

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Taking a quick dive into the technical side of things, it is clear that the way businesses market themselves has developed over the years. While the set of marketing tools used to pursue marketing objectives haven’t changed too drastically, it is important to listen to what consumers want and adapt to their needs. The 4Ps of marketing – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion – better make way for the keys of twenty-first-century campaigns. The marketing mix that acts as the foundation model for many businesses is no longer the best fit for the environment we’re now in. 

It’s time to embrace the Es and welcome Experience, Everyplace, Exchange, and Evangelism. Marketing is no longer solely focused on promoting to a mass audience. Instead, the emphasis is now on creating long-lasting relationships with customers while educating them about the value and experience your business provides. Experiential marketing is a strategy that will do just that. Out with the old, in with the new, the 4Es involve a more three-dimensional model compared to the two-dimensional one of the 4Ps.

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Doing something that you aren’t used to can be daunting. You don’t know how the audience will react and whether the reception will be positive or negative. The good news is that experiential marketing is proven to pretty much always cultivate a positive brand image; it ensures authenticity by providing an audience with personal interaction and creating a two-way conversation, humanizing the brand. By performing extensive market research, planning strategically, and getting your best creatives on the job, your business can successfully execute an experiential marketing campaign. Nothing exciting happens when you stay within your comfort zone, and this is the perfect time to begin experimenting with all the ways you can create a memorable experience for your customers. The future is experiencing and getting involved.