Any robust marketing plan mixes traditional marketing with new, more engaging methods – and one of the most engaging methods of marketing is experiential marketing. You can also call this marketing designed to engage the customer via a direct experience with a product or service.
While experiential marketing has traditionally been carried out in a face-to-face manner, the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to new ways to actively engage consumers in a virtual manner.
In this post, we’ll review what experiential marketing is, why it’s such an important part of any brand’s complete marketing plan, and some tips and advice on boosting leads and brand awareness in a virtual, non-face-to-face way. Just keep reading!
What Exactly is Experiential Marketing?
As the name implies, experiential marketing is a tactic that aims to directly engage the consumer with a brand so that they are able to experience it for themselves. When experiential marketing is done right, it engages one or more of the five senses to make an impactful connection with the consumer.
In return, this can help build brand awareness for consumers who aren’t familiar with your brand and create an emotional connection with those who are to drive even further brand loyalty and create lifelong customers.
Some examples of opportunities for experiential marketing include:
- Trade shows and other events
- In-store experiences
- Samples and tests
- Live demonstrations
- Virtual methods (more on this to come later in this post)
Key Benefits of Experiential Marketing
Consumers want more than just to see or hear about a product or service – they want to actively engage with it. And brands that successfully incorporate experiential marketing into their plans can reap the rewards for their efforts.
In fact, studies show that nearly 75 percent of all consumers indicate that actively engaging with a product or service makes them more likely to purchase it. But that’s not all the benefit you can enjoy from experiential marketing. Below are some more.
- Personalized engagement: Rather than an advertisement that’s meant to reach the masses, a good experiential marketing strategy is personal and intimate and allows a consumer to better know and understand a brand’s product or service.
- It’s marketing in real-time: Experiential marketing often takes place in real-time and encourages the participation of consumers.
- It encourages creativity and innovative thinking: While there are certain venues and mediums that are tailor-made for an experiential marketing campaign, the means by which a brand engages consumers and their senses is truly limitless. Experiential campaigns encourage creativity and can entice a marketing team to take chances and try new things to make a splash and create buzz.
- It can create word-of-mouth buzz: One byproduct of a successful experiential marketing campaign is word-of-mouth buzz. It’s estimated that up to 80 percent of all word-of-mouth activity is a result of a consumer’s direct experience with a particular product or service.
The end goal of any experiential campaign is to build further brand loyalty with existing customers and draw new customers to a product or service. When done correctly, an experiential campaign does more than just create buzz; it builds brand awareness, generates more leads, and improves overall sales.
Now that we’ve noted the benefits of a successful experiential marketing campaign, we’ll get into some of the strategies and ideas for carrying one out in a virtual manner.
Virtual Experiential Marketing Strategies and Ideas
As we noted in the previous section, experiential marketing challenges marketing teams to get creative and think differently. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and subsequent cancelations or restrictions on many of the live events that brands used to engage their customers, teams certainly were forced to pivot to new strategies.
And even as events and in-person activities have returned in recent months and years, many of the strategies adopted during peak pandemic times have remained viable strategies. Here’s a look at some ways to virtually engage consumers and boost leads and brand awareness:
#1: Mixed Reality
You’ve likely heard of augmented reality and virtual reality, but what about mixed reality? Mixed reality is essentially an extension of augmented reality, and it’s designed to allow both real and virtual components to act together in a virtual yet real-world-like environment.
In a mixed reality world, elements are designed to function as they would in the real world, allowing people to interact with objects or products. While there may be an in-person element to mixed reality, it can also be done via a virtual location and can be great for virtual product demonstrations.
#2: Mobile Games
Creating a game to engage consumers with your brand or product and launching it via your brand’s app or making it available to play on your brand’s website is an innovative way to involve consumers.
One example is the retail brand Pull & Bear, which created a game where players travel across the world collecting points along the way. Brands can also incentivize gameplay performance with discounts on products or services.
#3: Social Filters
With so many consumers on social media and platforms like TikTok and Instagram continuing to grow, social filters are one way to grow brand awareness. Starbucks did this with its holiday-themed filter in 2019, and there have been many other examples of brands that have successfully engaged consumers on social media platforms in a similar manner.
Other Virtual Experiential Marketing Ideas
Other potential virtual experiential marketing ideas and tactics include:
- Interactive billboards
- Virtual events or virtual stores
- Holding virtual demonstrations and Q+A sessions
- Holographs
- Live streams
Experiential Marketing Tips: Working With Experiential Marketing Experts
Like with any marketing campaign, you should clearly outline the usual best practices prior to launch. Think of best practices like setting clear goals, researching your target audience, developing messaging to engage the consumer and make the experience memorable, measuring results, etc.
However, when it comes to experiential marketing, you may need to go a step further than that. One of the best strategies for executing a successful virtual experiential campaign is to ask for help.
A good experiential marketing agency can take your budget and your team’s ideas and turn them into a reality that engages your current customers and intrigues a larger consumer base.