Merch Worth Having, Events Worth Going to
When trying to reach our audience online, the process, while the back end is rather technologically intricate and elaborate, is quite simple: you create a set of ads and let the algorithm get to work delivering it to the right people at the right time. Always optimizing, becoming more efficient with each iteration.
Experiential marketing, however, is a whole different ball game. A lot of planning, research, and groundwork needs to be done in order to deliver a memorable experience that leaves your audience with a positive impression of your brand that, when done right, has a measurable impact.
On the latest episode of Growth@Scale, Matt Widdoes sat down with experiential marketing expert and entrepreneur Jeremy Leal. Jeremy gave a first-hand account of his time at Red Bull and his own XM agency, Helen, and shared some of the lessons he learned about building relationships with your audience, and the people who help sell your product.
Understand Your Audience
To make genuine connections with your audience, you need to develop accurate customer personas. Use customer history, lookalike audiences, and scrape demographics from your social media following to develop a clear picture of who they are and what they like, to help inform the types of meaningful experiential marketing activations that will resonate with them.
Seamless Brand Integration
Authentically integrating your brand with a cultural event, festival, or activity is fundamental to creating meaningful interactions and experiential storytelling. Identify precise opportunities within your marketing strategy where your brand can elevate the overall experience. Instead of paying for a sponsorship-tier of an event where all you get is your logo on a t-shirt, consider other ways of authentically injecting your brand into the event. Is it a branded cooling station that provides relief in a hot summer event? Do you provide a surprise day off for the front-of-house staff responsible for recommending and serving your product? Whatever your industry, look for an authentic way to connect your brand with the event.
Create Memorable Merchandise
We all love swag, but not something that is going straight into the Goodwill bin after the event. To create a lasting impression with your audience, consider investing in merchandise that people will want to wear or keep. Look at what your competitors are doing and find ways to elevate it. It could be as simple as choosing a higher-quality t-shirt and making your logo less prominent in exchange for a more attractive design. The longer your audience interacts with their promotional items, the longer your brand stays at the top of their minds.
Define Goals & Assess Impact
If you can’t measure impact, is it even worth doing? Setting clear, concise goals prior to an event and establishing methods to measure impact after the fact are essential to evaluate success and applying learnings to future activations. Find what works, and do it more. If something didn’t have as big an impact as expected, try something else next time. Like any other aspect of marketing, experiential marketing is a learning process where you’re continually refining and building off past experiences.
Innovate Through Collaboration
A well-executed influencer partnership can elevate your experience and amplify your experiential marketing initiatives. Partnering with an influencer with a strong connection to your audience can heighten excitement, boost engagement, and make your event even more memorable. Further, the money invested in the right influencer partnership can pay dividends with extended reach, impressions on social media, and building stronger connections to your brand.
Think of experiential marketing as the IRL extension of your digital marketing efforts. You can still apply many of the same principles that deliver you success in the digital world, but with the added challenge/benefit of delivering real-time joy and excitement to your audience. By understanding your audience and meeting them where they are, finding ways to organically integrate your brand into an event, leaving them with swag worth keeping, and collaborating with influencers who can amplify your message, you can position your brand with valuable insights while creating memorable, measurable, experiences.
Make Experiences Worth Measuring
Experiential marketing is an often overlooked arrow in a brand's quiver. More data-centric companies that are more accustomed to checking a dashboard to measure results, tend to shy away from creating brand experiences because it's difficult to quantify the impact and determine if an activation was effective or not.
But experiential marketing is an invaluable way to build emotional connections with your audience, put your product directly in their hands, and when done right, turn them into brand evangelists.
On the latest episode of Growth@Scale, Matt Widdoes spoke with experiential marketing expert Hillary Self about the ways brands can create valuable experiences, and even measure their success.
During their conversation, Hillary outlined some useful strategies for brands looking to capitalize on building experiences for their audiences.
Set Clear Metrics and Goals: Root your experiential marketing events in leadership priorities. Know what you're aiming for. Whether it’s getting product in-hand, posts to social media, or tracking a region-specific bump in sales, there are ways to measure success of a brand activation that can help give insights on ROI.
Plan Consistent Engagements: You won’t find success with a “one and done” approach. If you’re going to be connecting with your (potential) audience face to face, you need to be consistent with where and when you activate. Schedule quarterly flagship events. Amp up the buzz with timely marketing campaigns and active social media engagement.
Craft Scalable Events: Not all festivals, trade shows, and sporting events are created equal. Design events that can be easily replicated across various venues. Consider building an 'event kit' that can be dispatched to local teams that ensure brand consistency and a level of quality you expect.
Seek External Help: Don’t be afraid to engage fractional help during peak times or when activating at a level you’re not wholly accustomed to. Tap event experts in your area who can help you navigate a new market or an event at a larger scale than you’re familiar with.
Share Behind-The-Scenes: Give your audience an insider's view. Experiential marketing is all about empowering your audience to build an emotional connection to your brand. This work isn’t only done on the day of the event, give your audience a peek behind the curtain to build excitement as well as strengthen their connection to your brand.
As we continue to give more of our time and attention to the algorithms that optimize every online interaction to deliver the highest possible return, it’s important to remember that your audience is made of real people who want to form emotional connections with brands that are important to them. Delivering memorable real life experiences is a valuable way to catch the hearts and minds of your audience. A little planning and attention to detail can go a long way.