Have you encountered any advertisements which made you think — “Story of my life!” or you were like, “Dude, wow! I have been waiting for such opportunity.”

This is, in short, the impact of Experiential Marketing on the consumers. What exactly is experiential marketing? Also known as interactive marketing, it is a modern form of marketing tactic which directly connects the marketer to the consumers, personalizing the ad experience or interacting with them from a more personal angle. The “personal factor” is what sets it apart from the traditional form of event marketing.

Using stories, real-life examples, helps you relate your campaign with the mindset and thought process of the consumers. With the experiential event marketing, you engage with your audiences, immerse them in your storyline and market your strategy for building connections. The emotional connection of a client towards a brand will result in loyalty and a lifetime customer.

“A recent study from Freeman finds that more than a third of CMOs expect to spend between 21 and 50 per cent of their budget on these types of experiences this year.” — SocialTables

Experiential event marketing has been used by many event professionals and event organisations to create a mind-blowing experience for the customers.

A customer-centric approach is all you need to strategize your next marketing campaign. Experiential event marketing is a two-way communication channel between the brands and the customers. Creating memorable experiences with the brands and adding value to the customer’s/client’s life is the milestone covered by the experiential event marketing.

Interactive marketing creates a stir amongst the audience because of the live event and video clips launched by the brand. Such captivating marketing ideas surely make a client think about trying the brand once.

Why do you think it’s time to opt for experiential event marketing? Bored of traditional methods or generating no leads?

Mostly, both of the reasons are valid. Nowadays, the audience wants something new and fresh from the oven kind of ideas which appeals to them in the most unique way. People love to experiment and so must all the event companies by opting for new methods of marketing and increasing their brand value.

The clients that you target might be out to look for something exquisite, out of the box and bam they stumble over your ad! This is the opportunity you need to create for yourself. For this, you need to start building interactive content and establish new connections. Create something fun which people would like to see or take part in! Start slow and low and start aiming high gradually as you set on getting a positive response.

There are many advantages of experiential event marketing and some of them are:

1. Improve Branding by implying proper event branding strategy

2. Interaction level with the clients elevates

3. Increases customer’s loyalty

4. Change the client’s perception towards the brand

5. Generating positive Word of Mouth

6. Maximize sales

7. Increases ROI

8. Generates new leads

Have any idea about brains behind experiential event marketing ideas? It is not just the brains, but the team who brainstorms over and over and gets the strategy right. It takes up a lot of research, knowing your customer’s choices, lifestyle in and out to create an experience to which they can relate with. 

Few of the key factors that play an essential role in getting it right are:

· Engaging Video

· Creativity is the pillar to success

· Sharing the experience created on social media

· Driving audience by engaging them in Activities

· Set a target audience

· Streamline a flow of events to have event branding strategy in place

Did you think of the above points? Some might have crossed your mind. But now what? Are you experienced to run a campaign which is a success and will drive the audience to your ad? This kind of experiential event marketing strategies not just requires theoretical knowledge but also experience in the interactive marketing field, social media marketing skills and storytelling practices.

The combination of the above plus an amazing event branding strategy with an incredibly creative and hard-working team will result in a positive response from the customer base.

“70% of users become regular customers after an experiential marketing event.” EventTrack

Let’s have a look at few event examples that shows the potent and efficiency of experiential event marketing.

1. Lean Cuisine — #WeighThis

Topic surrounded around sensitive health issues attracts a lot of attention. It was a refreshing and a fresh approach to connect with the audience using #WeighThis. Using this weight issue, Lean Cuisine asked women how they would prefer to be weighed, separate from their body weight.

The tagline used, “If you are going to weigh something, weigh that matters.” emotionally connected with many women and inspired them to be a part of this campaign. The responses received were all very positive and brought the campaign to an optimistic end.

The major takeaway from this interactive marketing campaign was to build your product around customers or rather with a customer-centric approach.

2. Facebook: Facebook IQ Live

Yet another memorable marketing campaign, this time by Facebook which created a momentum worldwide. According to the amazing feedback from the event, 93% of the attendees said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for Business.

The experiential event marketing induced the positive perception of attendees for the Facebook brand and they were assured to use it for business.

It was an incredible opportunity for the people who were new to the concept of Business using Facebook. Live installments and the live event helped people gain a better knowledge about the subject. In short, it was a well-planned and designed event branding strategy.

3. HBO Escape Rooms

Escape Rooms are now quite popular among masses and they are intrigued to experience what’s inside the room. Leveraging the concept, HBO provided a mega Escape The Rooms experience at SXSW 2017. It combined 3 large rooms into one mystery; the 3 rooms represented 3 different HBO featured shows — Veep, Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones.

Attendees participated and engaged in this experiential event marketing tactic majorly because of the fan following and the curiosity of how to escape the rooms. Recreating love experience for the 3 shows as on the set was a brilliant and effective idea to make the audience participate in your campaign.

4. Delta — Stillness in Motion

The 2015 Ted Conference by Delta is till date the most amazing, detailed and immersive experience, the audience has ever had. The motive of the Delta airlines was to make consumers realize the importance of steadiness in rush life. It is crucial for people nowadays to slow down and relax their minds.

To actively practice stillness, attendees were provided with an orb with which they had to enter a glass room, place the orb on a pedestal and place their hands on biometric sensors which synced the room lights with their heartbeats. This way the orb would capture the lowest heart rate and pulse a calming light.

After a soothing and mind-relaxing experience, the orb was gifted to the attendees as a reminder to slow down themselves in a speeding life. As a result of this incredible experiential event marketing campaign, Stillness in Motion generated 9.3 million Twitter impression for Delta.

5. Sensodyne’s Great Sensitivity Test

What’s the best way to launch a new oral product and what audience to target? Tricky, huh? Sensodyne although came up with a brilliant strategy to launch and target the best audience for its new Sensodyne Complete Protection product. Creating a stir amongst the kids and choosing one of the most interesting venues, Potters Field in London.

The entire setup was divided into 3 zones — Zone 1 was The Sensitivity Zone, which offered a 10-minute dental sensitivity check of the Londoners by the dentists.

Zone 2 welcomed the visitors with a 13-foot tall molar, which became a famous photo attraction for the visitors and gained momentum on social media.

Zone 3 attempted to break the Guinness world record for world’s largest oral hygiene lesson with a total of 232 people participating in the public learning.

The amazing event branding strategy of Sensodyne achieved 150 social media mentions, reaching up to 4 million total audiences. The campaign was a huge success with awareness of Sensodyne brand reaching out to masses.

6. Misereor — Social Swipe

With the world gradually shifting towards non-cash transactions and adapting to smart cards, this opportunity was seized by a German NGO, Misereor. They called this initiative ‘Social Swipe’, set-up was done at the airports, where all the travellers saw various issues that the NGO was trying to resolve like hunger.

The screen that displayed the images was equipped with a card reader, and anyone willing could go and swipe the card for just a small amount of 2Euros. And while the transaction was being processed, it showed the image of card cutting a loaf of bread! Unique, isn’t it?

The experiment though revealed some very helpful facts about interactive marketing like the effects of visuals on the audience, partnering with other brands is not always a downhill experience, co-branding can lead to amazing better experiences as well.

Experiential Marketing is like a huge playground for event marketers who can practice, do trials and errors, achieve success or even learn from the failures.

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