Beginner’s Guide to Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing puts customer engagement at the core of the marketing exercise. The improved engagement leads to a stronger relationship between the brand and its target customers leading to an enhanced lifetime value of the customer. Experiential marketing agencies play a key role in helping customers understand a brand better and develop a reliable relationship with it.

A Sneak-Peek into the History of Experiential Marketing

In the year 1893, some marketers considered that there were quite many firms that sell multiple products to the same kinds of people. The old methods of advertising were beginning to lose their impact as a lot of products were being advertised. A different thing was needed to be done to attract target customers to the current offerings. The solution was designed to organize an event with the primary purpose of allowing the customers to experience the products instead of merely depicting the products to them. This was the first time when experiential marketing was utilized. It was the year when World’s Fair was to be organized in Chicago and the event was the 400^th anniversary of Columbus discovering America. The event turned out to be a success. Slowly, companies across the globe started using experiential marketing techniques to create immersive experiences for their customers.

Why experiential marketing is required? 

Experiential marketing is not just a tool for running a single campaign but a method that governs how marketing works for your brand. An experiential agency creates competitions and events where customers get to interact with the brand. Customer engagement is a phenomenon that governs what the brand does across all channels and touch-points.

How to execute experiential marketing?

Execution of a campaign for experiential marketing relies on how you desire to project your brand and how the customers like to interact with the brand. Free samples and product demos are the common low-key methods of engaging with the customer. The best experiential marketing agency can do this for you by deploying a pop-up booth at a place where you can expect a big footfall or at a trade show where you have a booth. This way you make way for customers to experience your product and influence their purchase decision based on your product impression and strength. Methods of experiential marketing have been modernized with the help of technologies of augmented reality which helps the customers understand products a lot better than via traditional demonstrations. They get to experience the distinct variants of the products even when only a few can be made available in the real world.

A Look at the Different Kinds of Experiences in Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing accounts for any event or campaign that includes people actively engaging with your product or brand. Let us have a look at the distinct kinds of experiences that an experiential marketing agency can create for you:

Product showcase

Product showcase accounts for the most famous kind of campaign of experiential marketing. In this, the end user gets to experience the product instead of merely knowing about its benefits and features via traditional media. With the advent of augmented reality and virtual reality, one gets to craft an immersive experience at an affordable cost and then build the actual product depending on the reaction of your users.

Business Services and Innovation

Experiential marketing companies can create campaigns that help in solving real-world problems. Such campaigns are pretty effective and act as a long-term activity that helps in building a brand among its customers.

Immersive Experience

When you use the technology of virtual reality to create an experience where your users are completely immersed in a world, you make them experience the advantages of your products. Immersive experiences can also be crafted by mixing the real world and virtual world.

Stunts for Content Generation

Content generating stunts involve the use of impactful content with a huge audience in consideration. In order for the stunts to world, the content should be extremely relatable and sharable to a certain extent. Depending on the target audience and brand, the content should allow the audience members to dig deep into it and discover multiple layers of its meanings.

Choose the Best Experiential Agency for Your Company with These Tips

A lot of hard work and due diligence is needed when it comes to selecting an experiential marketing agency. An agency can make or mar the success of your campaign. Here’s a look at the vital tips that can help you in selecting a reliable experiential marketing agency:

Understand the Cultural Background of the agency

It is important that you talk to other clients and colleagues of the agency. Do online and offline research. You can plan a get-to-know session or a meeting to meet the facility of the agency. Analyze their corporate culture. Discover for how long the company has been in the business and also review their current work.

Consider an agency that has expertise in your industry

No doubt benchmarking the best practices from other industries is great but if you are required to offer training on the nuances of your industry apart from the basic regulations and environment, then that can become a hassle for you. The task will be expensive as well as time-consuming. Thus, it vital that your chosen agency has expertise in your industry.

Review present work and inquire about staffing

See the number of employees and the contractors that the agency has. See how the agency integrates work between independent and in-house contractors. Discuss the process that the agency utilizes to deliver on your requirements. In case you see that there is no process in place to work from a strategy, consider another agency. Experiential marketing agencies that are competent enough will depict you their best creative. 

Stay transparent

Share with the agency what it needs to know to meet your requirements and do the job effectively. In case you have particular parameters about the kind of work that the agency will do, it is vital that you let it know. In case there is another agency with whom your potential partner will be required to collaborate with, it is vital that you let them know about it. Gauge your comfort level with your chosen experiential marketing agency. Share your vision needs and expectations for the future and ask the agency to share theirs.