Experiential marketing aims to engage audiences with tactile and immersive experiences in real life. People can interact with your brand to get a more profound and meaningful understanding of what you do.
You're not just displaying a product. You're demonstrating what your product and business feels like in people's lives. It's about making your brand seem more 'real' and relatable to people.
Experiential marketing usually takes place in the form of events like trade shows and conferences. It can also appear as product testing and demonstrations, popup stores and celebrity interactions. There are many different ways your business can create an experiential marketing campaign.
It's important to remember that it's not a one-way means of communication with your audience. People are not passive recipients of information; they are active participants.
You can create tangible experiences that build an impression on consumers. There are many benefits of leveraging experiential marketing:
It can create a lasting relationship between customers and a brand.
It can boost brand memorability.
It lets 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.
It's clear that experiential marketing can boost your business's growth in many ways. One study found that 65% of consumers gained a better understanding of a product from real-life experience. Product tests and demonstrations work better than commercials and other marketing methods. Giving your audience a feel for what your product does has a greater impact than just showing them.
Experiential marketing needs to bolstered by solid content marketing practices. Content can help drive awareness and give people steps to follow after the event. Let's look at ways you can apply content to boost experiential marketing.
1. Encourage user-generated content.
An engaging experiential event can create intense feelings of excitement in users. They'll be keen to share what they're seeing and doing with their peers.
You can encourage people to share their experiences on different social media platforms. Create a hashtag beforehand, and ask people to use it and check in to your event.
You can encourage people to post content by engaging with their content. Share, like and comment on their posts in real time. Another way is to incentivize people by asking them to share content and write reviews. You can offer one person a discount or a unique experience as a reward.
A hashtag can create a unified way for content to appear on social media and other places. With enough traction, your hashtag can become a trend and take off on social media.
Content shared by peers is more trusted than branded content. Peer-developed content creates social proof and gets people to trust a company more.
User-generated content is useful in many ways. You can use it to get more traffic without having to create new content. It can build your brand's reputation. Social media content by your users will improve your brand's visibility online.
2. Work with influencers.
Influencers play a powerful role in influencing how people think about a brand or product. Today, your audience does a great deal of research before buying a product. They often look to influencers and their reviews to help them decide.
There are influencers in every field, and people respect them for their honest opinions. You can work with influencers by making them a part of your experiential campaign. Collaborate with influencers to create content in the form of blogs, videos, livestreams and social media posts.
In this way, influencers play a role in helping more people learn about your business. Your experiential marketing campaign also becomes more popular, getting you more engagement.
3. Prepare content for before, during and after your event.
It would help if you prepared for your experiential marketing campaigns by having a stream of content ready ahead of time. Your pre-event content should inform people about what's coming up and build anticipation. You can create social media posts, email blasts and popups on your site about the upcoming campaign. Create content that's compelling by using power words that build emotions like excitement.
It's also essential to have content pushed out during your campaign. This can happen through livestreams and on social media. Ensure that you're posting on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms where your audience is active.
When your experiential marketing campaign is over, you can still use its momentum to get more brand attention. Give your audience an action to take after the event. You can provide them with speaker videos, whitepapers, statistics, and other content on your site. Ask your audience to access exclusive content by subscribing to your membership site. You can also create surveys and polls and get post-event information. Such user-generated content gives you insights into the success of your campaign.
Make sure that you cover your experiential campaign in detail on your site after the information. You can also try to get PR and news coverage.
4. Work with the media.
Business-driven experiential events can be newsworthy when they aren't overtly promotional. It's a good idea to get media coverage for your experiential campaign by reaching out to journalists and news publications.
You can do this by sending email pitches before your campaign starts. Offer exclusive opportunities for content to the media. For example, interviews with the audience, speakers, or your business's leadership. It's vital to work on getting media attention ahead of time so that you get timely coverage.
5. Focus on video content.
You probably know that video content is the most engaging type of content you can produce. You can take footage of your event and share it later. You can also livestream your experiential marketing campaign.
There are different sources of videos that you can use. Your audience is an excellent source of authentic videos. Look for publicly shared videos of your campaign. You can also create a behind-the-scenes video that showcases what happened during the campaign.
Livestreaming is also a convenient video format that can get more viewers. There are several platforms that let you create livestreams. Use YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. Livestreaming is popular and makes people feel like they're part of the experience. Encourage people to take videos, pictures and photos and share them.
It's a good idea to make more people aware of your livestream, so make sure that you send an email marketing blast to your email list.
6. Repurpose content.
You can leverage an experiential campaign to create content for the future. You can create different types of content – videos, blog posts, images – and use the hashtag #throwbackthursdays from time to time.
Repurposing content is a great strategy to reach people who haven't seen your content yet. It's also a type of historical proof of your campaign, which will leave your audience with a positive impression.
Content plays a crucial role in building awareness for your experiential marketing campaigns. Try to apply these different strategies together to create the most impact for your marketing efforts. You'll be able to get more attention, more engagement, and longer-lasting connections.