What’s Experiential Marketing and how can your Business Benefit:

There’s currently a pandemic sweeping the globe. It’s called “ad fatigue” and symptoms include apathy, boredom and exhaustion. Research shows that consumers are sick of seeing the same old ads. Banner ads, display ads, native ads—consumers are no longer pay attention to them, and marketing projects are being hampered across the globe as a result.

The problem is getting worse. Eighty-one percent of consumers feel overwhelmed by the number of ads they see online, while 67 percent say digital ads just aren’t relevant to them. It’s no wonder, then, that up to 40 percent of Americans use an ad blocker when browsing the internet. What gives?

Consumers just don’t respond well to conventional ads anymore, but good managers know that marketing is a crucial component of any business model. Without it, you can’t reach your specific project goals and target consumers in your niche. This is why you need a cure for ad fatigue, and experiential marketing could be the solution.

What Is Experiential Marketing?

Forget about traditional ads; experiential marketing is a completely different beast. It cuts through the clutter and provides consumers with unique experiences they can’t find anywhere else. With experiential marketing, you create brand experiences at live events like trade shows, exhibitions and product launches. This is a great way to meet your customers, sharpen your market research, generate sign-ups and increase sales.

Here are a few examples of experiential marketing:

Hosting a pop-up event in a shopping mall where consumers can try out your products and ask you questions.
Augmented reality experiences where consumers can learn more about your brand.
Exclusive invitation-only events where consumers can meet influencers in your niche and talk about your products with experts.

All the big brands, and even small businesses who need to make a splash, now use experiential to move consumers through their marketing pipelines. Companies in various verticals use experiential marketing at live events to immerse consumers in one-of-a-kind experiences that provide real value.

Research suggests that experiential is successful—seriously successful. Ninety-three percent of consumers say that live events have a bigger influence on them than television ads, while 74 percent of people say they view a brand in a more positive light after attending a live event.

What are the Benefits of Experiential Marketing?

Your company can benefit from experiential marketing in myriad ways, but here are just a few benefits that differentiate experiential marketing from traditional marketing and advertising.

Gets People Talking

Experiential marketing does something better than any other marketing strategy: It gets people talking. When you pull off an awesome experiential campaign, thousands of people will talk about it on social media. In turn, this will increase the visibility of your brand on sites like Facebook and Twitter and generate more sales.

Boosts Brand Affinity

Experiential also boosts brand affinity. When consumers get to know your brand, they are more likely to gravitate towards your business rather than the competition. They’ll remember that fun experience they had with your company, and often use that memory as a tie breaker. This is really important.

Builds Relationships

Experiential builds relationships between companies and consumers. Consumers get the opportunity to meet the people who work for your company, and appreciate the personalities behind the product. This heightens the relationship between consumer and brand by humanizing your company.

Experiential Marketing Tips

Unfortunately, not all experiential marketing campaigns provide value. If a experiential marketing campaign is botched, it can actually damage your brand and be an embarrassing experience for everyone involved. To avoid any blushing, here are some tips for creating memorable experiences:

Find out what your consumers want from your brand. This will help you create experiences that resonate with new and existing customers.
Plan your experiential marketing campaign in stages for more effective results. Project Management software will help you do this.
Collect details from customers at live events (names, phone numbers, email addresses, etc.). This will help you find out more about your audience so you can fine tune your future marketing campaigns. This is critical for good customer development.
Promote your live events on your website and social media accounts.

How Tools Can Help with Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing is all about creating an emotional connection with your audience. Inviting consumers to test drive a brand new car at a trade show, for example, creates a unique experience that provides long-lasting memories.

You need to plan your experiential campaigns with great precision, however. Get it right, and you can send sales into the stratosphere. Get it wrong, and you could jeopardize the future success of your business. Fortunately, there are tools that can help with your marketing campaigns.

Project management tools can help you do the following:

Plan events with planning tools.
Assign tasks to team members and track progress.
Collaborate on experiential projects using one system.
Share documents with colleagues and stakeholders.
Gain deep insights into your projects with the latest analytics tools.

Project management software for experiential marketing lets you solve problems and make smart decisions in a speedy timeframe. The result? More effective experiential marketing.

Give Them Something New

Consumers are suffering from ad fatigue and crave new experiences that provide them with real value. This is where experiential marketing comes in. You can use it to move consumers through your sales pipelines, generate leads, and increase the visibility of your brand in one fell swoop. Investing in this type of marketing could prove lucrative for your business and help you achieve your project management goals.

Today it’s easy to sit and your computer and get everything you might want delivered to your door, often within a day or less. But there’s one commodity that demands you leave home: experience. Experiential marketing is how to motivate people to participate in your brand. Sales and marketing teams must collaborate. They need to share documents and be able to dialogue easily.