Experiential Marketing: What, Why, Examples, and How You Can Use It in Your Events

Experiential marketing is one of the most effective strategies to connect and interact with consumers. Traditional marketing campaigns are losing their efficacy in gaining customers. What is increasingly effective today is creating unique and energetic branded experiences to consumers, these branded experiences are called events. The brand experience begins with good experiences with your marketing campaigns.

Read on to find out what experiential marketing is, learn how to create an experiential event campaign that’ll surely engage event attendees, and discover how to leverage it for an organization or a brand.

What is Experiential Marketing?

Experiential marketing is also known by other names such as XM, engagement marketing, participation marketing, on-the-ground marketing, live marketing, brand marketing, guerilla marketing, or grassroots marketing in the marketing industry.

It is a type of marketing strategy that is based on creating imaginative and memorable branded marketing experiences for consumers. The idea is to emotionally connect brands through customer engagement through experience thereby increasing awareness and customer loyalty.

Creating an immersive live and memorable experience is the most important element of an event marketing strategy. After all, it is called experiential. This experience is essentially created through events. Therefore an event planner is needed.

What do the Experts Say About Experiential Marketing?

Knowing how it is called by other names and what it means is a great start at understanding experiential marketing as you intend to conduct your experiential event. Now let’s discover what marketing experts have to say about it.

“Experiential marketing is the live, one-on-one interactions that allow consumers to create connections with brands.” – Brad Nierenberg, CEO RedPeg Marketing via Best Bosses

The current crisis reminds us just how important our shared experiences are as humans. Live experiential marketing will return in full force as we look to reconnect with colleagues and customers. When we can’t be face-to-face, we opt for screen-to-screen which provides its own unique opportunities to connect in real-time. When delivering a virtual experience, keep a people-first approach. – Steve Wilson, Wilson Dow

“Experiential is the art of expressing a brand’s purpose and proposition through a form of physical consumer interaction.” – Sarah Priestman, Sense NYC via Adweek

Experiential marketing can benefit from emerging technologies to create personalized, multisensory experiences. For example, marketers can enhance a trial experience through providing samples to the consumer, then activating the products using augmented reality for additional content, filters for social media sharing, voice activation for mood-setting music, etc., for an on-demand experience. – Hamutal Schieber

“Experiential marketing is a practical advertising approach that primarily focuses on consumers’ experience.” – Shaz Smilansky, Director Blazinstar Marketing, “Why Experiential?”

“In experiential (loyalty), we talk about surprise and delight. If we happen to have tickets to a runway show, which we have for New York Men’s Fashion Week, we would send an email out to local individuals and say ‘Hey would you want to go see a runway show?’ Those are the type of experiential (loyalty) moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. When consumers think about leaving Cadillac for Mercedes, maybe they’ll say, ‘I remember Cadillac gave me this unique opportunity…” – Louis Falco, Head of Customer Relationships and Brand Loyalty, Cadillac via Limelight

Misconceptions about Experiential Marketing

As event planners, we must be able to identify what are common misconceptions about experiential marketing to have a good grasp of what it is. Most often experiential marketing is referred to as event marketing, yet they are not always or completely the same.

The two terms may not be the same but they are complementary and have the same core components. Event marketing is all about promoting a brand or product while experiential marketing is all about engaging consumers with a product or brand or organization through promotion.

Another misconception is that it is easy and it’s all about sparkle and fun. Well, it is more than fantastic displays and special events. More than having an extravagant event, a successful experiential marketing campaign must have predetermined KPIs by experiential marketers.

Moreover, some companies and organizations think it’s too expensive, therefore it is not worth the try. This isn’t so, in fact, it is cost-effective because of its experiential value that gives lasting impact to consumers, therefore, creating long-term value for a brand. In doing so, experience marketing develops brand loyalty more than radio, TV, or print advertisements would.

Why is Experiential Marketing Valuable to Marketers?

Experiential Marketing is beneficial due to the following reasons:

• Boost brand awareness – Experiential marketing events are a great way to put your product or brand name out there to get exposure and gain potential customers.
• Strengthen customer loyalty and brand affinity – Harvard Business School Professor Gerald Zaltman says 95% of our purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind. It means that when consumers have a positive experience with a brand or product, they become loyal to it.
• Lead generation and drive sales conversion –  According to Forbes, experience marketing is an avenue to collect and analyze consumer data. This data is helpful to marketers in knowing consumers and how to reach them to be able to convert them.
• Improve engagement – It offers a way for potential customers to have a memorable experience that involves the senses by participating in a brand’s or organization’s special event.
• Create an emotional connection between brand and audience – By delivering genuine live experiences, brands can form relationships with their consumers.
• Go viral – Experiential marketing has the potential to make brands and products go viral which will allow companies to maximize reach and possibly convert viewers because of curiosity and fear of missing out on trends. 

What to Steer Clear From When Putting Together an Experiential Marketing Strategy?

Experiential marketing is a great avenue to interact with your target customers when done the right way. However if poorly executed it can make consumers shy away from the brand or product.

An example of this is Amazon’s Nazi-themed ad campaign for a new TV series in the New York subway which outraged New Yorkers. Taking note of this example, there are some things you need to avoid when doing your campaign.

One is when the message is too complicated. Have a clear goal to create a clear message. Deliver your message to your audience in a simple and fun yet relatable way, creating a lasting and positive memory in them. 

Another is making it all about the product or brand. Always remember that experiential marketing is about customer engagement. Plan your event in a way that is centered on customer experience. 

Moreover, avoid making it like a sales pitch. Sales pitches are major turn-offs for your attendees to marketing events. Making your campaign salesy will automatically give attendees a negative experience. This will turn further negatively impact your brand image and credibility.

Lastly, there is no effective tracking or metric tool. It may be easy to calculate reach but it is hard to point out conversion specifically to your event. Establishing KPIs before executing your campaign can help you determine whether the event was a success.

How To Plan An Effective Experiential Marketing Campaign

1. Determine the target audience 

Plan according to what delights your potential customer or target audience. Understand your audience by following tips:

• Get in the mind of attendees
• Identify what cohorts of attendees you have
• What experiences do those different cohorts or groups want to have?
• What do attendees want or need to take home from the event (experiences, contacts, education, materials, networking, etc.)?

Once you understand your groups of attendees and their needs, design an event to deliver on those experiences.

2. Set a goal and a budget 

Make SMART goals and figure out a budget based on your goal to create a successful experiential marketing campaign.

3. Create and convey a clear message

Associate your message with your brand like RedBull’s Stratos campaign. It aligns with the company’s identity of being bold and extreme.

4. Develop a strategy that imparts value 

Make your campaign not just profitable to you but also helpful for your target audience.

5. Design an engaging and memorable campaign experience 

Encourage interaction and make your campaign appealing to the masses.

6. Make use of augmented reality

Immerse consumers into the virtual world and create an interactive experience for them.

7. Device a multi-channel campaign 

Make use of different marketing channels to spread the news about your campaign or live event.

8. Persuade customers to spread information 

Encourage the audience to make a buzz through different online platforms after launching your campaign.

Types of Experiential Marketing

Here are some of the most common types of experiential marketing:

• Retail Installation (Pop-up stores) – a pop-up shop is a marketing strategy in which a company temporarily takes over a space to introduce a product or brand or a cause.
• Guerrilla Marketing – is an advertising strategy that uses unconventional methods to attract an audience to a product, brand, or cause.
• Brand Activation – a campaign or event to make a brand or product known to an audience and build a lasting connection with them.
• Event Marketing – this is a marketing strategy that promotes a brand, product, or service by participating in an existing event.
• Augmented reality and metaverse – is a strategy that allows brands to create an out-of-this-world experience through their mobile device to grow their brands.
• Co-branding – is a strategy where two or more companies form partnerships to create an experience that satisfies all brands involved.
• Product Demo – this is a strategy where companies allow customers to experience their products and services by trying them out first.

Event Espresso’s free demo and Event Smart’s free trial is the perfect example of product demo. They allow event planners to experience their services without fee for a period of time.

Examples of Successful Experiential Marketing Campaigns

Take on your next experiential marketing event with these few examples:

1. Coca-Cola FIFA World Cup AR football experience. This campaign allowed participants to experience playing alongside Xherdan Shaqir a Switzerland player through augmented reality while the brand ambassador was handing out Coca-Cola.
2. Guinness Beer opened its building for consumers to experience the history and heart of their brand. Customers get to explore Guinness across the seven-floor building. From sampling their most popular beers to learning how to pour your own pint from an expert.
3. Refinery29 is a lifestyle brand that hosts 29Rooms events. It is composed of 29 branded and curated rooms for attendees to have a multi-sensory experience with brand partners. Each room has unique experiences to offer.
4. Cheetos metaverse experience. Frito-Lay launched Chesterville, a Cheetos-themed digital neighborhood where attendees complete tasks around the neighborhood to earn points on the Chesterville mischief meter creating a fun and immersive experience.
5. Ahrefs and Buffer share their digital marketing strategies to get website traffic with evergreen content and social media marketing. Although it was not as multi-sensory as what a live event would have offered. It gave attendees the chance to interact with the host through chat. Plus, they provided slides and other resources to attendees.

Marketer’s Advice and Takeaways

• Be silly and fun yet be relevant and stay on brand. Fun is one major element of experience marketing. As event planners think of creative ways to make your campaign entertaining yet profitable and use all possible channels to interact with consumers.
• Partner with creators and artists to create a special event for the brand or organization. Think of ways to incorporate trends into your experiential campaign and think outside the box to lead attendees to your experiential campaign.
• Be innovative, be unique, be the first to create something new, and don’t be afraid to scare by pushing the limits and boundaries. Think big and leave a lasting impression by creating immersive and out-of-this-world multi-sensory experiences.
• Gamify the experience or make use of event apps. Include opportunities for play and let target customers compete and win to get the feeling of achieving something making them zealous and loyal to the brand.
• Don’t be afraid to foster relationships with your leads. Follow up with them and remind them of their participation in your event. Remind them of the wonderful feeling they had about the brand and the learnings they had on the campaign.
• Partner with other brands and work together to create an even better experience for your audience. Consider a business field that is usually not associated with the brand and develop creative ways to collaborate to create unexpected experiences.
• Make sure the experiences you created for the brand’s special event align with the brand identity and values. It doesn’t always have to involve the product. What’s more important in the strategy is positive brand association.
• Last but not the least, the experience should leave an impact on consumers, giving significance to them by making them better than they were before the experience. You may do this by offering new knowledge or new ways to solve a problem.

Leverage Event Smart to Deliver Your Best Event Experience for Attendees

Now that you know the most important elements of experiential marketing and its examples and best practices, stop settling with boring traditional marketing strategies that offer nothing and aim only at making a sale.

Make use of this powerful marketing tool. Plan your experiential marketing campaign by applying this new knowledge, avoiding common mistakes, and applying marketers’ advice. And launch your experiential marketing plans with the best event software; Event Smart.

Event Smart will give you more time in planning out your special event by providing you with an event solution that works for you around the clock. Take care of tickets and registration to your events right from your website with Event Espresso.

You may delay but time will not. Start your free trial now!