Conferences

Conferences – regardless of whether that’s B2B or B2C conferences – are a form of experiential marketing. In particular, conferences bring people with similar interests together, giving them the opportunity to talk and listen to industry peers. At conferences, you can learn and network with others, including potential customers and industry experts.

Pop-up Stores

Pop-up stores may last days to weeks and act as temporary storefronts for your brand. For brands who may only have an online presence, they can utilise pop-up stores to trial a physical retail space.

Meanwhile, pop-up stores can also be used as a promotional ploy to attract new customers at locations away from main storefronts.

Product Demos

Product demonstrations, or product demos, are another type of experiential marketing, where a brand, usually a sales representative, highlights the value of a product and how it works to potential customers.

This type of marketing introduces the product to customers who may have otherwise not seen it before or understood its features, positioning the product as the most effective solution to the audiences’ pain points.

Why Experiential Marketing Is Important

Research has shown that consumer expenditure on experiences instead of material goods leads to happier consumers. This is because lasting memories and impressions of experiences provide stronger feelings of satisfaction, whereas these feelings don’t last long after buying material goods.

This shows the significance of experiences in today’s society, which can be termed as an ‘experience economy’, where experiences are dominating the consumption space. As a result, experiential marketing campaigns are becoming increasingly prominent – and justifyingly so.

Why wouldn’t you want to maximise your profits with experiences since that is what’s in demand by consumers?

Experiential marketing is undoubtedly an excellent way to create memorable experiences for customers. At the end of the day, we’re all humans who are intrinsically emotional beings – and you will most likely foster loyal relationships between your brand and customers if the customers feel connected to your brand.

An experiential marketing strategy goes above and beyond traditional marketing – you’re not simply selling products and services to a customer, you involve them in your brand’s story and make them feel like they’re a part of your brand on a personal level.

There are numerous advantages to experiential marketing that make it a gold mine for any marketing team. These include:

Creating Memorable and Engaging Brand Experiences

In an advertising landscape where consumers may find ads on every corner, it’s crucial that your brand is able to catch and hold the attention of the target audience. This is where experiential marketing excels, creating memorable experiences that aren’t intrusive, and are ones that your target audience can enjoy.

You can expect to find consumers who are already interested in your brand, products and experience that you’re selling, as an experiential marketing campaign often attracts a specific audience – especially when you consider that these are bespoke experiences made especially for them.

Consumers are demanding more and more personalisation – and, with experiential marketing, you can fulfil this demand. Particularly, experiences that encapsulate your brand’s values lead to a much more effective experiential marketing campaign, as customers are able to associate that experience with your brand.

Not only will you lure in your target audience, but it’s also possible that other members of the audience will feel compelled to engage with your brand simply from genuine interest. This can help improve your brand’s reach and increase brand awareness, which helps with generating sales and profit.

Experiential Marketing vs Traditional and Digital Marketing

There are distinct differences between experiential marketing and traditional or digital marketing that may define which type of marketing strategy your brand would benefit the most from. Whilst an omnichannel approach would certainly give your business a competitive edge, it’s still worth considering the differences between these forms of marketing.

As mentioned previously, experiential marketing focuses on experiences, whereas traditional and digital marketing often use straightforward approaches that simply aim to sell products to the customer. This means that customers are more likely to have an emotional investment when buying products as a result of an experiential marketing campaign, whilst the same may not be said for a traditional and digital one.

Instead of ads in magazines or newspapers, social media ads, or conventional TV ads, of which are all found in traditional and digital marketing strategies, you can expect pop-ups, live events, exhibitions, and other experiences to be part of experiential marketing.

The key difference is that the former opens a one-way communication channel between brand and customer – meanwhile, the latter offers two-way communication, supporting the participation and interaction of the customer.

Why Do You Need Experiential Marketing Software?

Get Clarity on ROI

With Dashboard, you can instantly view the metrics that are currently being recorded during the event, or have already been recorded post-event. This means that you have complete access to live analytics as the event progresses, as well as access to a full report of the total engagement at the event once it has concluded.

Another Exposure Analytics product that can help with this is the Ex Sensor, which counts footfall by detecting smart devices of visitors. With features such as the Ex Sensor Statistics and Conversion Ratio, you can view unique visitor statistics such as the number of engaged visitors and engaged dwell time, as well as analyse conversion rates of visitors becoming engaged from passing.

The insights garnered from these products can provide clarity on performance indicators like ROI, as well as provide guidance on making decisions regarding future experiential marketing such as securing the marketing budget and staffing. Without such technology, it’s far trickier to ascertain the performance of the event.

Improve Your Customer Experience

Exposure Analytics’ solutions, including our popular Apex, do not disturb the experience of your customers during the event, but can actually improve it – both in real time and in the future.

Notably, Apex utilises a stereoscopic 3D sensor that accurately counts footfall – a market-leading product in the events analytics industry. With Apex Occupancy, the number of people in a certain space can be displayed both to you on our platform, and to customers at specific entry points.

Showcasing the live number of people in an area can help prevent overcrowding as it can inform customers that they will have to wait before they’re able to enter that area if the maximum figure has been reached. In turn, this can improve their customer experience during the event as overcrowded rooms may negatively affect their overall experience.

Further expanding on improving experiences, the Ex Sensor’s Ex Sensor Flowchart reports the busiest and most popular routes that visitors take as they move around the event space – this means you’re able to clearly monitor the flow of traffic.

This is especially useful for planning future experiential marketing initiatives when it comes to how a person moves around the venue, and how you can make it easier or more efficient for them to do this.

Understand Your Customers

Our People Co-ordinates product can also assist with traffic, especially as People Co-ordinates can track the movement and behaviour of customers during the event. With this product, you can measure specific interactions and dwell times of customers, seeing whether they’re engaging with your event in the way that the event has been designed for them to.

Whether that’s via a one-way system or other, People Co-ordinates can help you track their movement, which can help you identify how you can optimise your space better for your next event. Again, the Ex Sensor Flowchart can inform how your customers move around, thus you’re able to identify peak traffic times and areas that also can be optimised for future events.

The metrics that are gathered by the end of the event can be analysed to show customer behaviour during the event, of which this analysis can be used to help you gain a better understanding of how your customers interact with your experiential marketing campaigns.

Essentially, knowing how to serve your customers better – thereby investing in the success of your customers – also leads to the success of your brand as it gives them that extra nudge to finalise their decision to purchase products from your brand.