Experiential marketing, also known as “engagement marketing,” is a marketing strategy that invites an audience to interact with a business in a real-world situation. Using participatory, hands-on, and tangible branding material, the business can show its customers not just what the company offers, but what it also stands for.

-Hubspot

We have a question for you: What do you think makes a good movie? Is it the “happily ever after” ending?

Perhaps it’s the entertainment, suspense, romance, or the surprising twists. But, what makes it exciting and noteworthy? Well, that’s clear, the experience and the emotional connection that the audience feels about the story, the characters, or even just watching the movie with a special person eating popcorn.

That is quite similar, in the case of EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING where a worthwhile connection is introduced between a brand and it’s target audience. Experiential Marketing is a level over-and-above than just promoting specific products or services. Therefore, it’s a concept that fascinates the customers with an enthralling and memorable experience that will last longer than any advertisement.

According to researchers, it has been said that 74% of consumers are more likely to be involved in a brand that introduces experiential marketing campaigns. Even 65% of brands have experienced a hike in sales after adopting experiential marketing.

This blog post will unfurl the 5 best practices to employ Experiential Marketing that will help you connect with your right audience.

The main focus of every brand is to connect with the audience and drive purchases, it is highly necessary for brands to come up with something impactful and exciting that might become a memory to thousands or millions of people.

For instance, let’s take Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign which came to existence just out of the box in 2014. Leaving aside huge jazzy event directions and brand activations, Coca-Cola came-on-like extremely smooth and simple by replacing its iconic logo with names and terms of affection like “Bestie”, “Bro”, “Buddy”, “BFF”, “Star” and so on.

The campaign quickly went viral on social media and naturally turned into a powerful call-to-action to purchase a bottle of coke. Later, the company even introduced its eCommerce store to order personalized bottles.

Experiential Marketing is not just about promoting a specific product but it is also about communicating your brand’s message and values to your audience. Allowing a real-life experience will make your audiences memorize your brand’s message and values for years to come.

Take a look at this example “D Rose Jump Store” a campaign that was created by Adidas which took place in London, featuring Basketball’s Superstar Derrick Rose. This unique pop-up store gave Adidas fans a chance to take a pair of Rose’s signature sneakers home by jumping 10-foot high. Hundreds of fans checked-in and participated in the contest to win that exclusive pair of Adidas shoes for free.

This simple tactic of experiential marketing gave fans a chance to acumen the life story of an incredible NBA player in addition to encouraging Adidas’s theme of athletics and its outstanding performance.

As a brand, it is extremely important to know how your product is making people feel. Specifically, if you offer anyone candy or a pen as a part of the campaign, they’ll consign to oblivion the second that the candy fuses into their mouth. While a pen might twiddle one’s pocket for some time and haul off as soon as they reach home.

However, an awesome t-shirt that’s won in a certain competition or given away by taking part in an activity will be worn frequently. A crazy party with a famous host or a cooking class with a brilliant chef will give the audience a permanent memory and exposure.

A great example of this is the “3D Oreos at SXSW” campaign that was introduced during the SXSW festival in 2014. The concept included the combination of Twitter, 3D Printing and the Oreo Cookies where the attendees could customize the classic oreo cookie with flavours based on trending twitter topics at that moment.

This digital snack twist delighted the SXSW fans where they even stood up in lines for almost two hours. The experiment generated over 10,000 combinations of flavours and patterns and became Internet bluff for the moment.

When it comes to experimenting with a marketing campaign, that adds value and pull-off your brand’s goal, it’s always better to explore all possible creative ways to take your campaign to the next level. However, Virtual Reality is a new-age technology that can be definitely adopted as a marketing strategy to connect with your audience.

The epitome for this is “Boursin – a popular cheese brand” which set up a VR experience that took the consumers on a sensational tour via a refrigerator full of appetizing and delish feasts. It was a live activity where users found themselves floating into the refrigerator picking out ingredients and flavours.

Unsurprisingly, this type of projection mapping was initiated for the first time by a food brand bringing virtual reality and brand-awareness together in the UK. Thereafter, the product usage increased to 19% which later rose to 36% within a few months itself.

Looking for an event partner has worthwhile perks. Regardless of how collaboration is the optimal way to grab productive and innovative campaigns. In case, you spot the brand to partner with the same target audience, you both can together reach the goal of embracing new audiences. Plus, you do not go through any pressure of keeping the partnership belatedly.

One of the terrific examples of this would be the collaboration of “Google and Zappos” that fused together surprisingly in 2015. The concept was to give away free cupcakes to those who share a picture using the Google Photos app. Zappos came up with a cute cupcake truck across the street in Austin that had a slogan of “Pay with a Photo.”

That campaign also asked people to insert the cupcake they’ve got from the truck in exchange for other goodies such as sunglasses, hats, ties and watches. This campaign got so interesting that even one member from the production management jumped out to take part in it.

However, a great engaging campaign might take your budget a bit high but it’s not necessary to spend millions to advertise your product as long as it is interesting enough to fascinate people. What will really take your promotion, in the long run, is the meaningful idea that can give people a memory.

In today’s over-infused market, consumers prefer to connect with companies on a personal alignment. And, without any doubt, experiential marketing is a socially correct way to interact with people exclusively.

Offering a real-life experience to your customers is not just a side option, rather an essential element of any strong marketing plan. We suggest you take your time to think of the best impactful and creative ideas to connect with your audience.