Experiential Marketing: A Dive into a Powerful Strategy for Businesses

Experiential marketing isn’t a new concept. You may read the title of this article and instantly think of event marketing. However, experiential marketing is different. While event marketing focuses on the event’s logistics, experiential marketing is about involving consumers in memorable live experiences. It’s about creating a deeper emotional and psychological connection between the consumer and the brand. Keep reading if you’re intrigued and want to better understand experiential marketing and how you might use it.

Experiential marketing, or engagement marketing, is a marketing strategy that invites people to interact with a business in a real-world situation. This hands-on approach allows a business to show its customers what the company offers and what it stands for. It’s a strategy that’s becoming increasingly popular.

The Benefits & Goals of Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing can create a lasting connection between customers and a brand. It allows businesses to collect vital data about participating consumers, which can be used to improve their strategy. These campaigns often take an integrated approach, combining tangible offline experiences with an online dialogue. This combination can be particularly effective when you consider that people are twice as likely to share video content with their friends than any other type of content.

Examples of Experiential Marketing

Expensive Idea: Red Bull Stratos

Red Bull has been known for its extreme sports coverage, but the company took its content marketing to new heights with the Stratos campaign. This campaign featured Felix Baumgartner, a skydiver from Austria, who partnered with Red Bull to set the world record for the highest skydive – 128,000 feet, about 24 miles above Earth’s surface. The event was streamed online with a million viewers, which was out of this world!

Affordable Idea: Lean Cuisine’s #WeighThis Campaign

Lean Cuisine’s #WeighThis campaign is an excellent example of an affordable experiential marketing campaign. The campaign encouraged women to weigh their accomplishments rather than their bodies, and it resonated with many women. The campaign was successful because it tapped into a powerful emotion and created a meaningful experience for the participants.

Experiential Marketing for Small Businesses

Even small businesses can leverage experiential marketing. Let me give you some ideas on how restaurants or landscaping companies can create memorable experiences for their customers. For example, a restaurant could host a cooking class. Customers can come learn how to make one of the restaurant’s signature dishes. This can be a fun activity and engaging experience for customers while allowing the restaurant the opportunity to showcase its culinary skills and the quality of its ingredients. A landscaping company could host a “Design Your Dream Garden” workshop. FYI: My wife would love this so if any landscaping companies run with this idea in Central, Florida, please give me a heads up. The workshop would allow customers to come learn about different types of plants, how to design a garden layout, and how to care for their plants. This provides value to the customers and an engaging experience while positioning the company as a valuable resource that will help them stand out from similar businesses.

The Future of Experiential Marketing: Augmented and Virtual Reality

New technologies like augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are opening up new possibilities for experiential marketing. Benefit Cosmetics used AR in their ‘A Lashtastic Virtual-Media Campaign.’ This campaign allowed users to collect tokens in their physical space using their mobile phones. These tokens could be exchanged for discounts, mascaras, or virtual beauty consultations on Benefit’s website. The campaign proved incredibly effective, with a conversion rate of over 50%, a CTR of 39.4%, and an average gamification dwell time of 2 minutes and 22 seconds.

KillerB Wrap-Up & Challenge

Experiential Marketing is a powerful approach that can create a stronger connection between your brand and its customers, and we love the idea of creating stronger connections. Whether you’re working with a large or a small budget, with some creative thinking and planning your brand can implement experiential marketing at your business. The key is understanding the experience you want your customers to have and creating a campaign that allows them to do just that.

I want to challenge businesses to brainstorm of ways to use experiential marketing to create a stronger connection with people. Could you ask your team how your brand can create immersive, memorable experiences? How can you put yourself in your customers’ shoes and truly understand the experience they want to have? The possibilities are endless, and the potential rewards are immense.

Articles Referenced:

• Legend Blog: 10 Examples of Experiential Marketing Campaigns That’ll Give You Serious Event Envy. https://www.zynthesis.com.hk/blog/10-examples-of-experiential-marketing-campaigns-thatll-give-you-serious-event-envy
• 13 Examples of Experiential Marketing Campaigns That’ll Give You Serious Event Envy. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-experiential-marketing-campaigns?_ga=2.116456966.1493533741.1651261320-703119526.1651261320