Experiential Marketing can help visitors to get more involved with your website. Indeed, visitors that enjoyed a great experience will most likely return to your site and tell their friends about it! But most of the websites, unfortunately, offers content that is not worth a second visit…

Websites that fail to engage their visitors are going nowhere. If you’re a website owner, you’ll soon recognize the symptoms of an unengaging website. Your site will show moderate traffic but without returning visitors. Many times, you’ll spend lots of money – good SEO, detailed product descriptions, targeted keywords, social media ads and even paid advertising. But all the money spent shows little result – maybe a couple of subscribers to your newsletter? What on earth is wrong?

The visitors to your site had a peek but didn’t find what they were looking for. Surely, the vast majority of visitors to your website must have had a bad experience. So, how can you improve your site for visitors to have an unforgettable experience and to visit the site again? You can achieve it with experiential marketing.

What is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is the process of identifying and satisfying customer needs and aspirations profitably, engaging them through two-way communications that bring Brand personalities to life and add value to the target audience ¹. It is also known as ‘engagement marketing’ where strategic, resourceful content are used to engage people, to create meaningful interactions over time.

How did experiential marketing come into existence?

It all started with the interactive web. The advent of the internet and specifically Web 2.0 has allowed consumers not only to recognize favorite brands but also to interact with them. Even more, social network platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have facilitated the empowerment of brand consumers from content users to content creators…

It’s therefore most important that brands tell stories that fascinate their users.  After all, consumers acquire products and services not only because of what they can do but also because of what they mean ². In fact, they’re seeking products or services that they can engage comfortably within a social manner.

Benefits of experiential marketing

There are many benefits of leveraging experiential marketing (Jared Atchison, business.com):

• It can create a lasting relationship between customers and a brand.
• It can boost brand memorability.
• You collect vital live data about your audience and get on-the-spot feedback.
• It can increase engagement on social media.
• It can lead to brand loyalty.
• You can use it to educate people about your product.

Experiential marketing in practice

The success of experiential marketing depends on the effort that you put into the planning and execution thereof.  Christa Tuttle writing for Business2Community recently identified three best practices for experiential marketing:

1. Know what experiences your target audience wants

You should research your target audience to see what experiences they like. Your target audience may prefer the following ‘good’ experiences on your website:

• Interactivity – recent research results showed that higher levels of perceived interactivity were linked to the attribution of moral, sociable, and competent traits to brands ³. Therefore more ‘openness’ about a company’s brand and social responsibilities has resulted in positive eWOM (e-word-of-mouth).
• Self-concept – in the consumer’s eyes, all services have a personality that is determined by functional attributes (quality, professionalism, installations) and intangible factors (advertising, branding, price). Indeed, by developing customer engagement and self-brand connection, you may cultivate customers who act as advocates and ambassadors for your brand, and subsequent improvement in your financial outcomes ².

2. Use the power of story telling

Stories transmit information and transfer experience ⁴. After all, telling stories and getting people to listen to them is part of us since the dawn of humanity. And it is no different now. Indeed, the internet has allowed us to consume numerous stories from a variety of creators. So, what story needs your brand to tell to get your website alive? Tell your brand’s story in such a way that readers can engage and add their own narrative or experience.

Katy French writing in Column Five Media suggests the following to successfully tell your brand story:

• Meaningful – if you want to tell a good story, it has to be interesting and relevant to the people you’re trying to reach.
• Personal – if there’s no place for someone in your story, there’s no reason for them to pay attention to it.
• Emotional – a strong brand story is all about stimulating emotion and empathy.
• Keep it simple – focus on one person or one problem at a time so you don’t confuse or distract your reader.
• It should be authentic – when you share your brand story, people should know it’s your story.

3. Spread the experience is through social media

A social media platform such as Facebook is a great place to start your experiential marketing campaign. You can find prospective users of your products or services participating in social media groups. They share their experience with your brand more easily with the social group. Hence you can easily pick up what the user’s perceptions are and which part of your story needs to change…

Concluding

John Young writes in THE DRUM that “Participation, emotional involvement and most importantly, learning and broadening understanding is the way to deepen engagement with a brand or its products”.

Lastly, Web 2.0 has made the internet alive. Now you must feed the internet with the right content that will keep it alive – and for users to indulge. What could be nicer for a brand to go viral and gaining on the way masses of loyal followers and brand advocates?

Read more: Use the Humanity of Facebook to Boost your Retail Sales

eBizplan.net’s offers Web Content Writing services can help you to create content for your site.

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Notes

¹ Smilansky, S. 2017. Experiential marketing: A practical guide to interactive brand experiences, Kogan Page Publishers.

² Moliner, M.Á., Monferrer-Tirado, D. and Estrada-Guillén, M. 2018. Consequences of customer engagement and customer self-brand connection, Journal of Services Marketing, 32(4):387-399.

³ Van Prooijen, A.M. and Bartels, J. 2019. Anthropomorphizing brands: The role of attributed brand traits in interactive CSR communication and consumer online endorsements, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 18:474–483.

⁴ Carroll, B. 2010. Writing for digital media, Routledge.

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