Creating an effective experiential marketing strategy

Running a successful experiential marketing campaign takes careful planning and a comprehensive strategy to ensure everything goes well. You’ll need to ensure that your experiential campaign aligns with your wider marketing and business objectives and that you’re presenting a consistent brand image. 

This blog will cover everything you need to know about experiential marketing, including:

• What is experiential marketing?
• What are the advantages of experiential marketing?
• How to create an effective experiential marketing strategy and run your first campaign 

What is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is a type of marketing that involves physical or virtual events that are designed to raise brand awareness, connect with your target audience, and increase sales. For example, experiential marketing includes running an in-person event offering free samples or demonstrations to support the launch of a new product.

Experiential events or activations often incorporate games, activities or competitions to attract potential customers and create interest in your brand. They often leverage storytelling and focus on creating emotional connections with consumers through live events, interactive experiences, or augmented reality.

What are the advantages of experiential marketing?

84% of marketers believe experiential marketing is a crucial marketing strategy, and with good reason – there are many reasons to include experiential marketing tactics in your wider marketing strategy. 

Here are some of the top benefits of experiential marketing campaigns.

Brand awareness

Events and experiences help to boost brand awareness by communicating your brand’s core values to your target audience in a fun and engaging way. Experiential marketing events help you forge long-lasting relationships with your customers and create ongoing brand loyalty. 

Brand loyalty and customer retention 

Well-planned experiential events can help to nurture brand loyalty and improve customer retention. By offering consumers a chance to connect and engage with your brand in a personable way, you help to create an emotional and long-lasting connection with your brand. 40% of people who attended a brand event said they felt more loyal to the brand.

Word-of-mouth marketing 

Experiential marketing creates a buzz around your brand and drives word-of-mouth marketing. Running exciting and memorable experiences is a great way to ensure that your brand is talked about – on average, a person who attends a live brand experience tells 17 other people. 

Boost product sales 

Experiential marketing doesn’t just help with brand awareness, recognition and loyalty; it can also help increase your product or service sales. Brand events allow potential customers to try a product for free, watch a demonstration, or get a free sample. 80% of people said that live demonstrations or free samples affect their decision to buy a product or service. 

How to create an effective experiential marketing strategy and run your first experiential campaign 

To run a successful experiential marketing campaign, you’ll need a comprehensive experiential marketing strategy. An effective strategy with clear goals and objectives will help guide your choice of experiential events and experiences and ensure that everything you do stays consistent with your brand image and messaging. 

Here are the 6 steps you can follow to ensure your campaign succeeds. 

1. Have clear goals and objectives 

The first step should always be to work out what you hope to achieve by running experiential events and experiences. You could focus on attracting new customers, brand loyalty or sales of a particular product or service. 

2. Understand your target audience

You should always take the time to understand your target audience. Researching your ideal customers and the type of events they would engage with best is crucial if you want your experiential campaign to be a success. 

3. Create a clear and consistent message 

It’s also useful to think about how you’ll keep your branding and messaging consistent across all forms of experiential events and your other marketing channels. This is essential so your target audience can easily recognise your brand across all touchpoints. 

4. Design a memorable experiential activation

Once you’ve planned your goals, researched your target audience and thought about consistent messaging, it’s time to plan and implement your experiential activation. Ensure that the event is unique, memorable and engaging to your target audience. After they’ve left the event, you want your brand or product to be at the forefront of their minds.

5. Capitalise on engagement

Experiential events are a great way to utilise user-generated content and create a further buzz around your brand. Consider including hashtags for consumers to share content on social media, which helps your brand reach an even wider audience. 

6. Evaluate the campaign’s success

After your event or experience, you’ll need to measure how successful your event was using key performance indicators (KPIs). This will allow you to see how effective your experiential activation was and make adjustments for future events. 

Need help with your experiential marketing strategy?

If you need assistance with your experiential marketing strategy or help running a brand experience, Another Way should be your top choice. 

We specialise in creating bespoke experiential events designed to forge an emotional and lasting connection with your target audience. Our engaging experiential activations are crafted to attract new customers, retain existing customers and strengthen brand loyalty. 

Our founder, Andrew, has been in the Experiential and Promotional Marketing industry for over ten years. He’s used his ‘heads up’ to craft incredibly successful experiential events for a huge range of brands, including Airbnb and Ferrero. Our bespoke events and experiences drive real results for our clients.

We can create an effective experiential marketing strategy that supports your wider business goals and aligns with your existing brand messaging. Using our global network of contacts and trusted roster of talent, our expert team can plan, implement and deliver the perfect experiential experience for your target audience. We also include a post-event evaluation to help you easily measure the success of your experiential marketing campaign. 

We offer:

• Brand strategy and identity consultations 
• Physical, digital and hybrid experiences
• Brand partnerships
• Experiential activations and events 
• Location and venue sourcing 
• Travel, logistics and event management 
• Post-event evaluations

So, if you’d like our help running an experiential event, call us at 0778 948 5123 or email us at [email protected]. Alternatively, complete our online form, and a member of our team will reach out to you as soon as possible.