Bring Consumer Closer With Experiential Marketing/ It's Not About Advertising. Make Experiences.
As the world moves beyond the hues and cries of posters, radio, ads; silently there is an emerging wave of understanding that revolves around making consumer the centre of the whole marketing campaign. The narrow lane of traditional one way communication in between the brands and the consumer has now lost its meaning in ever polluting digital abundance and advertisements that keep on popping up almost everywhere. The need of the hour is a consumer centric multimodal communication with the brand, that not only increases the loyalty towards the brand but emotionally connects them.
The best bet for any marketing campaign, today is Experiential Marketing which enables an effective way to cut out the noise of continuous social chatter and reach target consumers. Experiential marketing or what in colloquial terms is called Engagement Marketing is geared towards immersing the customer towards an experience that is memorable and has emotional connections with the brand to foster brand loyalty. Experiential marketing is moving the needle for brands across the globe; by directly engaging customers, inviting them to actively experience brands in-person rather than putting them in the role of a passive observer as happens in traditional marketing campaigns.
If one breaks it down and starts from the very beginning, experiential marketing is essentially a method that enables brands and products to market themselves on activation ground using immersive experiences. The main motto remains to align the values associated with the brand, with increased perceptual awareness of consumers by emotionally connecting them through unique face to face experience with the brand.
As one begins strategizing an experience for a brand, one needs to think about it in terms of a complete consumer journey and experience. Not just a way for a consumer to walk in, buy a product and walk out. It’s about what as a creator wants customers to feel, what they want them to learn, and the message they want them to walk away with.
One needs to engineer occasions of intimacy for the consumers when they get a chance to spread the word-of-the-mouth about product, and leverage community-based social media mediums like Instagram etc. Each time consumer pours out their true raw emotions through their own stories they truly become genuine brand ambassadors. Their love for the brand, their relationship with it as it openly comes in front of the world, enables the brands to gain their precious instant loyalty and project it, which was otherwise lost to other mediums of marketing. This way instead of just blandly reading-up a pre-made artificial content about brands, consumers themselves get to have a continuous lively engagement and say about how great brand really is.
Experiential marketing is meant to leave an impression so one needs to constantly push and test the limits of creativity. Think about adding layers like gamifying the experience and creating a vibrant social media campaign around the experiential strategy. Or try adding a pinch of nostalgia, give it a historical twist in the experiential recipe, to bring back old memorable feelings in a strong way to emotionally connect with your audience.With Experiential marketing, one needs to think big and push the boundaries by including in the campaign multiple forms/ways of Consumer engagement which includes voice and opinions of the audience.This creates a feeling of shared ownership and mutual engagement that results in a much more memorable experience. Also don’t shy away to use the cutting technologies like AR/VR to engage as many senses as possible for a thoroughly immersive experience.
Lastly and most importantly one has to remember that the experiential strategy does not always have to involve the product. As long as the result is a powerfully positive brand association, the strategy is worth it every time.
In conclusion, consider the fact that even after all the increase in ad spend 93 per cent of consumers still claim that live and experiential events have a larger influence on them than TV ads. Companies across the globe are looking to create social media buzz by connecting with customers, and build the brand by investing in some well-planned experiential events to bring their brand to life. As the world turns, the game evolves pertinent question is are you ready to play and redefine the rules through Experiential marketing.
