Your experiential marketing campaign doesn’t have to be a big blowout event. Not all company budgets will accommodate that kind of spending, and not all expensive campaigns are the most effective anyway.
Here are a few key aspects to keep in mind while planning an experiential marketing campaign, regardless of your budget.
Know your audience, and speak to them directly.
One key to a successful experiential marketing campaign is having a specific target audience. Spending tons of money to try to attract the largest possible group of participants could, in fact, backfire in the end.
If the consumers don’t feel like they’ve received something personal, your campaign will likely end up tainting instead of improving your image. Consider the local community and events your brand can get involved in, for example, before you splurge.
Have an end goal in mind, and a plan to reach it.
This is long term, beyond even the end of the marketing event. Maybe you imagine attracting lots of attention with your campaign, but for what purpose?
Just because a campaign attracts, a large audience doesn’t mean that turnout automatically translates to sales. What do you want your experiential marketing to achieve?
Ask yourself this critical question at the very beginning, and come up with specific answers–– we’re talking numbers. Once you’ve decided on your metrics, you can start to come up with a plan for success.
Create a sensory experience.
Ultimately, you want an experiential marketing campaign to be memorable and in turn create a reaction, whichever goals you’ve decided on. You can trigger memory through the senses.
Maybe all your audience needs is to experience your product fully. Maybe you want to immerse them in an encompassing experience. Whichever the case, it has little to do with money.
You can spend a lot of money and end up with a forgettable event. Engaging the senses doesn’t have to be costly.
Get social about it.
The great thing about social media is that you can get major results with minimal funding. And social media is crucial to experiential marketing success!
The right social media implementation can vastly influence turnout and other metrics of success. It can be used in a variety of ways, to do anything from increasing brand awareness to bumping up web traffic on your site to making more sales.
You can achieve major benefits from a strong social media approach, and that part won’t cost you.
Capture the imagination.
People will be more likely to remember a new experience they’ve had. If you can manage a new way to engage with people or give them a new perspective, you’ll get them talking about you.
For example, getting people to look at an everyday object in a new way or integrating technology in a surprising way they haven’t seen before.
The possibilities of experiential marketing are endless. People aren’t just wowed at decadence.
Of course, all of this isn’t to say don’t spend the money when you have it–– If you want to create a big blowout campaign and pull out all the stops, go for it! But just make sure you understand what you’re getting into.
Carefully assess the potential and don’t rely on the sheer size or cost of the event to translate into the results you want.