Experiential Marketing – Is it worth doing?
What is experiential Marketing?
Experiential marketing is designed to create a relationship with a brand through interactive experiences. There are a lot of ways a business can interact with their customers; these include, but are not limited to: Product sampling, immersive experiences, PR stunts and Events.
Why should you do it?
Because customers develop a connection with your brand it helps grow a brand’s brand health, and create a memory effect in the mind of the consumer.
Product trials offer customers a cost-free entry into your brand by allowing them to sample what your brand has to offer. This can be a good way to gain exposure, but has its inherent risks.
It increases conversion. Research by EMI/Mosaic Event Track found that customers are 74% more likely to purchase following the attendance of a Branded event!
Why shouldn’t you do it?
Scale. In order to be effective, experiential marketing need to be done on a large scale. Providing free samples in a specific area could work, but you may be hitting a small proportion of your target market. Leading to inefficiencies and wastage.
Given the inherent differences in experience, it makes measurement particularly difficult. You can implement a system to measure attendance, but what about engagement? This is where it gets more complicated.
Events are also limited by a brands creativity. If a brand holds an event, it puts pressure on the creative teams and the creative may not be what the customers enjoy. This can limit the reach of the event, but also the effectiveness and ROI.
Is it worth doing? Yes – If done properly…
Measure impact from these campaigns can be difficult and deter brand from undertaking them. For one of Brightblue’s clients who ran 3-4different types of experiential activity over a year. Brightblue’s was only able to find a measurable uplift in sales from a small number of those activities. Where activity could be measured, Brightblue saw a revenue payback up to £2.84. Showing that for every £1 invested in experiential an up to £2.84 payback.
As it can be seen from our research, it is generally difficult to pick up impacts of these campaigns, as they don’t generally translate to instant sales and can be difficult to measure effectiveness. We found that spending up to £100K is enough for the campaigns to achieve scale and be successfully measured. This will vary depending on the brand and campaign implemented.
There are a lot of factors that go into effective experiential marketing campaigns, and getting them, all right can be a difficult and mind-bending task! Having an event which interacts all the senses and paired with a means to spread the work online (or by other mediums) stand the chance of viral exposure and growing the brands image world-wide.
So, what makes a good campaign?
Scale. Holding a large campaign will increase the likelihood of seeing an impact from this type of campaign. But because of the inherent measurement difficulties, how to scale a campaign can particularly be difficult.
Engaging the 5 senses get more people involved, and etches the experience in their mind, creating a positive brand experience and a potential buying opportunity.
Pairing with an Online medium will grow the reach of the event and create more wide spread buzz for your business and your products. A Gilmore Girls themed Luke’s Diner’s branded snapchat filter was viewed around 870,000 times.
Brightblue Consulting are a London based consultancy which help businesses drive incremental profit from their data. We provide predictive analytics that enable clients to make informed decisions based on data and industry knowledge. Through Market Mix Modelling, a strand of Econometrics, Brightblue has a proven track record showing a 30% improvement in marketing Return on Investment for clients’ spend. If you are interested to find out more please contact us through email by clicking here and one of our consultants will get back to you shortly.
Sources:
https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/brand-experience-report-2017-ipm-launches-measurement-scheme/1437444 https://www.mhtpartners.com/measuring-the-live-experience-developments-in-analytics-to-estimate-experiential-marketings-roi/ https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/brand-experience-report-2017-ipm-launches-measurement-scheme/1437444
https://learn.g2.com/experiential-marketing https://www.theipm.org.uk/Uploaded/1/Documents/IPM%20Experiential%20Measurement%202017.pdf
https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/experiential-marketing-definition-ds00/ https://www.elitedaily.com/entertainment/lukes-diner-gilmore-girls-free-coffee/1631521