How the Experiential Marketing Industry Needs to Adapt to a COVID-19 World

The present times have made majority of in-person experiences temporarily impossible. Thus, agencies and brands have re-imagined how to create meaningful engagement with their customers and fans via virtual experiences. Experiential marketing services have started creating engaging community conversations on multiple event platforms to redefine the rules of experiential marketing. Even though virtual experiences cannot entirely replace the value of in-person experiences but when done right, they can prove to be pretty meaningful, memorable and transformative.

Let’s consider how experiences can be created in the COVID-19 world:

Create experiences considering the needs of your target customers

The most important step in designing any experience is paying attention to your customers. Before you can reinvent a brand experience, you need to understand how your customer experience is changing and where the opportunities are present. In spite of the lockdown, customers value shared experiences. When experiences are created with empathy, digital or interactive platforms have the potential of reaching a wider set of target audiences with stronger levels of engagement than what you might observe in a physical event.

Active audience participation

An important aspect of experiential marketing is making way for active participation by your audience. This might sound like an obvious point but the fact is that a lot of experiences today are centered on content that designed to be consumed by people rather than co-created. A top experiential marketing agency will create an event where people are able to actively participate in an experience or generate original content. Brands need to adapt to the role that they are playing in promoting culture and considering new ways to build community via shared experiences.

Empower consumers to share their story

In spite of the challenges of remote production owing to COVID-19, brands have gotten an opportunity to create an added impact via digital experiences. The experiences are created by meeting customers where they are and making their audience the heart of the story.

3 Easy Ways to Start Planning for Your First Experiential Marketing Event

Experiential marketing or brand activation is a way of creating awareness about your product / service by organizing immersive experiences and stunts, treasure hunts, quiz contests and similar events. By creating such events you will be giving your customers an opportunity to participate in a live interaction session and fun and entertaining activities that involve your brand, your company and your business representatives. The consumers will be coming directly in touch with your offerings and will understand what value you add to their lives through your products / services.

But for your event to be a success, you first need to find the top experiential marketing agency that can help you:

1. Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience and its composition is the very first step that you will have to take before you plan for the big event. Go through the age and income criteria of your prospects and also their purchase patterns so that you can come up with an appropriate customer profile. This persona is what you are going to be targeting with the help of your experiential agency. Design your product and your experiences according to the needs and preferences of your customers.

• Establish An Emotional Connect

Your experiential marketing services provider should be able to help you come up with the most effective and engaging messages and activities that are not only going to portray you and your brand in the right light but will also help you establish an emotional connection with them. You can start by narrating your story to your audience and discussing about your struggles and hardships that you faced while conceptualizing this product/service or coming up with your own enterprise.

• Give Them What They Want

At the end of the day, the purpose of a top experiential marketing agency should be to understand what your customers are looking for. It is not only about the free samples that you distribute, but the overall experience that you can deliver. Your customers and prospects want to have a gala time and this is exactly what you should be able to give them in a carefully selected venue and without them having to spend any money at all.

2. Ensuring The Success Of Your Experiential Marketing Event

Finally, every marketer or entrepreneur is looking for just one thing which is to increase their sales and profits. This can be achieved by establishing a strong connection with their audience. The only purpose of your big event is to get closer to your customers and discover prospects that in other scenarios wouldn’t have known about your brand at all.

Tips to Help you Analyze your Experiential Marketing Agency

In order to make sure that you get access to a reliable experiential marketing agency, you need to keep certain factors in mind. Let us have a look at the vital tips that can ensure that you choose a good agency:

The portfolio of work

The first thing you need to do while selecting an experiential marketing agency is going through their previous work. While considering their work portfolio, consider distinct types of activations they have executed and the industries they have worked for. When you see that they have previous expertise in running campaigns that you are interested in and have worked with brands that are similar to yours, you get the assurance that the company will be a good fit for you.

Understand the specialties of the agency

Agencies that have broad offerings might not possess the same level of commitment or expertise in experiential marketing. Agencies that claim to be brand activation service providers might not have the integration and strategy know-how that you require. You need to consider the core capabilities of your experiential agency. For instance, if you are looking for a sampling or pop-up activation and all you get to see are high profile concerts and festivals in the portfolio of your agency, then you need to continue searching.

Ask for references

When it comes to searching for companies to work with, asking for references is always a good idea. Having the contact details of the present or past client of a company helps you in understanding their relationship and experience of working with their partner. Ask questions to the client that help make way for greater understanding and dialogue.

Discuss strategy

Understand how the agency utilizes market research, consumer behaviors and data insights to form their experiential concepts. Understand the thinking process of the agency. See if they consider your objectives and challenges and are ready to provide customized approaches. A lot of production vendors or companies might provide turnkey services like scheduling and staffing but won’t be able to identify the gaps in measurement, delivery or messaging beforehand. This can set you up for tough-to-calculate and unsatisfying results. The Experiential marketing companies need to have a process in place that they stick to while collaborating with a new partner.

See their willingness to collaborate with your other partners

Your brand experience is dependent on collaboration across departments, teams, agencies and channels. If your agency is ready to join you and your other partners for a collaborative discussion, it is always a great sign. This implies that the agency values the media planning and brand work that is going on elsewhere.

5 Practices of Brand Activation that Get Your Startup the Attention it Deserves

Words like experiential marketing and brand activation hold a lot of relevance today. But they also get thrown around a lot because a lot of entrepreneurs do not really understand what they mean and what their principles are that actually get your customers talking about your product / service. A company that is trying to create a completely ground breaking event for their customers is said to be looking forward to performing brand activation.

Experiential marketing and brand activation are also used interchangeably because they share a lot of characteristics to begin with. When a product or service is released for the first time among your customers or potential consumers, it is done for the purpose of increasing the awareness around it and your brand. Both brand activation and experiential marketing are essential if you want to get the word out about your existence and that of your products and services. An event that gives your customers an opportunity to directly connect with you as a company and experience your product / service for the first time is what defines a successful experiential marketing event. Brand activation companies suggest a few practices to always include in your experiential marketing strategy. They should help you put your startup / brand new business under the limelight within practically no time:

• Make Purchase Possible

Always make it possible for your customers to purchase your items directly on the venue so that you can boost your sales easily. Link the entire experience to the product or featured item that is easily accessible to your customers.

• Long Term Support

Also do make it a point to use the event to convey to your audience that you are here for the long haul. Inform them that you are constantly at their beck and call to provide them with uninterrupted long-term support and trouble shooting assistance.

• Emotional Response

Tell your story to your audience together an emotional response and connection from them. Ensure that people walk away with something new and probably a reason to return to your brand whenever you organize such an event again.

• Intelligent Use Of Consumer Data

Before planning this marketing event, every brand activation agency would recommend you to use consumer data in the most appropriate manner. Pair it with observational data to know and understand your consumers better. Uncover their purchase habits and also their responses to different existing products and brands in the market.

• Offer Interesting Experiences

An experiential marketing agency that comes highly recommended would always advise you to create unforgettable experiences for your audience. Give them something that they have never seen before. Brainstorming and researching constantly is going to help you come up with ideas that are not only fresh but also groundbreaking.

A Look at Why You Need To Invest In Experiential Marketing

When it comes to the marketing budget of your company, you might have varying opinions as to where you need to invest your money. A lot of companies invest in social media as that is where majority of their customers spend their time. No doubt social media marketing is vital but it is pretty challenging to stand out online. One of the most efficient methods in which you can build a relationship with your customers is by offering them an experience that they will remember. Experiential marketing involves engaging your customers with the help of live events.

Let us have a look into how an experiential marketing agency can be beneficial for you:

You get to set your brand apart with the help of live events

Businesses get to build their credibility by providing quality services or products and offering great customer service. Brands that are successful have a distinctive ability about them that allows them to stand out. Live events act as the best platform for businesses to build credibility. An event acts as an opportunity to provide your customers a unique experience that they can remember. The experiences help in creating a lasting bond between your attendees and your organization.

You get to provide your customers a sensory experience Memories get created with the help of physical experiences. The Experiential marketing companies create events that engage all the five senses. Traditional forms of advertising are not capable of achieving this. Live events also offer customers the chance to interact with the products/services of your brand. They get to experience your products in a tangible way without having to purchase them.