Experiential Marketing: The Complete Guide 2024
In all industries in the past year, employees and employers alike were forced to think outside of the box like never before. As marketers, we constantly explore unique solutions and entertain wild ideas. But even we had to expand our thinking to new levels of creativity and pivot our marketing strategies to stand out in a world of Zoom-mania.
Experiential marketing existed long before this pandemic, but marketers worldwide revamped this tactic to fit this new socially-distanced climate. In this blog post, we will go into detail on exactly what experiential marketing is, and ways that your organization can make this strategy your new go-to for 2024.
What Is Experiential Marketing?
Let’s say that you are walking on a sunny college campus, and suddenly an eager student wearing a university club t-shirt runs up and hands you a Post-It note that reads “Your smile is infectious!” You are told to spread the positivity and hand this same note to a fellow student on your way to class. Hours later, the entire campus is teeming with people holding brightly colored notes.
This school-sponsored organization was practicing its own form of experiential marketing. By embedding itself into the lives of its “consumers” (students), it was able to make a lasting impression on the students’ memories. More students would express interest in joining the club, which would lead to more members and an increased budget.
Experiential marketing occurs when a team creates an experience that leaves a long-lasting impression on the audience. Sometimes, these events or experiences can be a large investment of time and/or money, but the reward is increased brand recognition and higher revenue.
A successful experiential marketing campaign is one that quite literally “runs into” the consumer. Your brand and experience should seamlessly flow into the consumer’s life but should also stand out enough to force the consumer to stop and take notice.
Looking for event marketing advice? Read The Event Marketing Guide.
What Isn’t Experiential Marketing?
Experiential marketing is trickier to execute than its counterparts. Other marketing tactics like print and digital are quite simple to define, while experiential executions tend to fall in a gray area.
Experiential marketing is not an umbrella term for every advertising campaign that occurs in “real life” as opposed to over a screen. For example, a standalone billboard advertisement is not considered an experiential campaign. An experiential marketing campaign involves the audience directly in the tactic. The audience is active in the advertisement rather than passive.
Experiential marketing is not limited to “real life”. Later in this blog post, we will provide examples of some excellent digital experiential tactics designed by brands. Experiential marketing can take place over a screen as long as the consumer of the content is actively engaging with it.
Below are some examples of advertising tactics that you may see day-to-day. We have defined how and why these are or are not examples of experiential marketing.
- A banner ad on your smartphone
No, this is not an experiential marketing tactic. The banner on your smartphone is a static advertisement that does not interact with the consumer other than to promote its message. The goal of the banner ad was to garner high click-through rates, not to create an emotional connection with the consumer.
- Andy Bernard and the cast of “Sweeney Todd” performing in the office (on The Office)
Any true Office fan will remember Andy Bernard’s musical performance in Sweeney Todd. At the beginning of the episode, the cast of the play stages an impromptu performance for the rest of the office. This is an example of experiential marketing, as Andy and his castmates were directly involving his coworkers in the musical experience as they promoted the play.
- A print ad in a magazine with a QR code for a coupon
Even though you are engaging with the ad to redeem a coupon, you are not having any experience with the brand. If the QR code led to an online game created by the brand or a virtual concert sponsored by the brand, then it would be an example of experiential marketing.
Types of Experiential Marketing
![Experiential marketing campaign](/sites/default/files/styles/column_content_width/public/image/2021-03/experiential-marketing-campaign.jpg?itok=qndjFIXA)
Experiential marketing tactics have become increasingly prevalent as technology has become more sophisticated. However, like the Post-It note example above, these tactics do not have to be super complicated. Below are some of the most common types of experiential marketing that brands adopt today.
Events
As we in the events industry know very well, there is truly no replacement for face-to-face interaction. Events are an essential part of your marketing strategy to engage your audience and introduce them to your brand. Many companies have gone beyond the traditional shareholder dinners and monthly sales events to create unique experiences that get consumers talking. We gathered up some of the best examples of these events to inspire your planning process:
- Revolve Festival
- Anheuser-Busch Virtual International Beer Festival
- Cheetos “House of Flamin’ Haute” Fashion Show
- Hulu Virtual PrideFest
Installations
Have you ever walked by a pop-up shop sponsored by your favorite TV show? These installations are a way for brands to engage their audience in a particular city or town by becoming a part of their surroundings for a few days. With in-person options limited and social distancing a requirement, brands had to get creative with their installations in 2020. Here are some of the most creative executions that we found:
- OGX Car Wash
- Wendy’s Halloween Drive-Thru
- HBO’s Lovecraft Country Drive-In Event
- Reese’s Peanut Butter Robot
One day (hopefully soon), the possibility to gather in-person will be there again. To give some inspiration for when that day arrives, we also found some outstanding installations pre-pandemic to share:
- Netflix’s “The Irishman” Manhattan Little Italy Takeover
- Dove Body Wash Sustainable Vending Machine
- Club Wyndham “Elf” Hotel Room
Digital
With our phones and computers playing such important roles in our lives now more than ever, many brands have embraced the fact that consumers are rarely without a device in their hands. By integrating their campaigns directly into your screens, digital experiential marketing campaigns are accessible from anywhere. Below are some of the most interesting digital activations we found:
- IKEA + Snapchat Escape Room
- Canada Goose in California Virtual Reality Experience
- South by Southwest Virtual Reality Experience
Best Practices of Experiential Marketing
When designing your experiential marketing campaign, your team must align with the strategy. What is the goal of this campaign? What resources are available? What is the tone that we want to communicate? It is very easy for an experiential campaign to look sloppy if all the elements outlined above do not fit. Follow these best practices before designing your campaign to ensure consistency.
Define Your Goals
Brands create experiential marketing campaigns for many reasons. Before you brainstorm ideas, gather your team to decide why you need to execute this tactic in the first place. We’ve named some of the most common goals below, but if none of these speak to your organization, take the time to find your “why”.
1. Expand Your Reach
Maybe your brand is very recognized in the Northeast, but you want to expand to the West Coast. Or maybe you have brand awareness across Europe, but you want to become better known in Asia. Whatever your expansion goals are, an experiential marketing campaign is a great way to introduce your brand to a region through location-based tactics.
2. Clarify your brand image
Brand loyalty is built on a brand’s image. Anyone can replicate a product. If your consumers are only with you for your product, what happens when a new company appears with a similar product but a stronger brand story? Your customers will jump ship. Consumers want to feel a connection with the companies that they support. Experiential marketing is a clear way to announce your brand’s story and ideals to your audience.
3. Send a friendly reminder
If your organization has been around for a long time, it can be hard to capture your audience’s attention in new and exciting ways. Experiential marketing can not-so-subtlety remind your customers of your brand’s mission, purpose, and tone.
Write a Compelling Story
Once you figure out your campaign goals, it is time to draft your story. The purpose of an experiential marketing campaign is to be interesting, so get creative with it. However, stay within the scope of your resources. Outline your budget, time, location, and other project constraints. Design your story with these limitations in mind.
Authenticity
Throughout the process of executing your campaign, ensure that your messaging stays true to your brand. Experiential marketing can be one of the most successful ways of communicating your brand image and personality. However, it can easily become very disjointed or awkward if your experience does not reflect your brand's values.
To make this easier to understand, we decided to explain by example. Imagine you work for a big-time Manhattan event planning company that specializes in creating daring, off-the-cuff experiences for young and trendy New Yorkers. Below are some key elements that you would consider while designing your experiential marketing campaign:
1. Experience
It would be a strange choice for this fashionable event planner to design a common campaign centered in a simple hotel ballroom or a stuffy restaurant. To convey a more avant-garde approach to event planning, the company could instead throw an impromptu street fashion show or flash mob. Onlookers would take photos and post to social media, creating organic buzz around the event planning style of the organization.
2. Location
When creating a live event or installation, the saying is most definitely true: location, location, location! These event planners would not be reaching their desired clientele if they hosted the brand experience in a popular tourist zone such as Times Square or a very corporate-centric area like Wall Street. Instead, they should search for up-and-coming neighborhoods with a reputation of trendiness. The location of your experiential marketing campaign should enhance the experience and add to the brand message, not argue against it.
3. Energy
Have you ever been to a party where you show up ready to dance and as soon as you walk through the door your energy goes from yay to…bleh? If these event planners organized corporate retreats or spa weekends, it would make sense to create a relaxed mood. However, these event planners need to align their exclusive events with a proper level of excitement.
Evaluate your campaign continuously during the creation phase to make sure that it stays true to your brand’s voice and image. Experiential marketing should clarify to the consumer what your brand is – it should not further muddy the waters.
Proving the ROI of Your Experiential Marketing Campaign
Although not as glamorous as the actual execution of your campaign, the data collection process post-campaign is one of the most important steps. If you do not analyze the ROI from your experiential marketing campaign, you won’t know if you carried out the goals you outlined earlier in the process.
There are multiple ways to measure the ROI of your experiential marketing campaign, depending on which tactic you choose to employ. Below are some common data elements you can track, but you can always measure additional criteria as it applies to your strategy.
- Number of downloads
- Website traffic
- Number of social media posts and/or tagged photos
- Percentage increase in news mentions year-over-year
Conclusion
Before jumping in to create an experiential marketing campaign, be sure to weigh the pros and cons of this effort. Experiential tactics tend to be more costly and do take a lot of manpower and time to execute successfully. If the resources are available to you and you think an experiential strategy is the right move, begin to plan.
Do your research – what have other brands similar to yours done in the space? Is there room to differentiate your brand? Outline your goals and write them down so they are always at the forefront of the strategy. Brainstorm multiple ideas, and make sure that they align with your brand image. Keep the campaign authentic and true to the organization. Finally, take the time and energy to do a thorough analysis of the success of the campaign. Learn from the campaign's successes, but also its failures. Make note of where things could have been improved upon and use these lessons in the next campaign.
Experiential marketing is a great strategy to set your brand above and apart from the rest. By taking the time to complete your due diligence and craft a compelling narrative, your brand can win earned media and increased exposure in the marketplace. And, you need to make sure that you have the right event marketing platform to track all of your data in one place.
![Anna Linthicum](/sites/default/files/styles/focus_scale_and_crop_300x300/public/image/2020-04/Anna%20Linthicum.png?h=cf3026d5&itok=dGCHEjX9)
Anna Linthicum
A recent graduate of Washington and Lee University, I am currently the Sales Development Representative for the Marketing Partnerships team here at Cvent.
My writing journey got its start with stories about my cousins and our incredible adventures together on family vacations. You can find me organizing my closet, doing Kayla Itsines workouts, or watching The Office for the umpteenth time.
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Omnichannel Marketing: The Complete Guide 2024
Events are a key part of the marketing mix and, for many B2B brands, provide a unique opportunity to interact face-to-face with target audiences. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations flexed their approach to events, moving them online to maintain momentum and to attempt to gain the same buy-in that events so often create. Now, omnichannel marketing has become a primary focus for organizations worldwide.
Live events have returned in full force, while others offer online options or take a more hybrid approach. But whether a live, in-person, or online event, the core objective remains the same: to be in front of your audience and deliver your message. An omnichannel marketing strategy will help you achieve just that.
![ultimate-guide-to-digital-marketing](/sites/default/files/styles/column_content_width/public/image/2019-02/ultimate-guide-to-digital-marketing.jpg?itok=bdd1PCCB)
What is omnichannel marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is the strategy of taking a holistic view of all online and offline touchpoints that your audience has with your brand, to provide a consistent experience. That might sound straightforward enough, but when you consider the vast array of channels that this could encompass, it can be a real test for brand efficacy and internal communication.
But it’s worth it. An effective omnichannel approach provides a much greater breadth of coverage and message penetration. It allows you to reach new audiences and reinforce your campaign with those who see it in multiple places. This has a compound effect on your marketing efforts, making them far more effective and helping you achieve much greater results.
Have a strategy and stay on target
Without a clear strategy before you start and close ongoing management throughout, each of your campaign’s channels could easily deliver a disparate feel, especially if the assets themselves are being created and tactically implemented by various teams across your organization or by different channel-specialist suppliers or agencies. Whether this disconnect is in the tone of voice used, creative visual approach, or anything else, it will reduce the potential results.
- At best, your audience won’t instinctively connect the dots of each campaign element, and you’ll lose the multiplicity of messaging impact you could have achieved.
- At worst, the experience will jar in their mind as they wonder if the lack of coherence is due to a deliberate change in your core messaging or poor internal communication. In this case, you could risk alienating your audience and undermining your brand long-term.
With such an array of different channels engaged, omnichannel campaigns must be thought through and well-structured, with strong project management from the start. Every team responsible for executing the campaign's tactical element must understand the brief and how their area affects every other.
![Omnichannel marketing](/sites/default/files/styles/column_content_width/public/image/2019-12/Marketers%20Guide%20to%20Getting%20Maximum%20Impact%20from%20Live%20Events.jpg?itok=1OqbcwOc)
Omnichannel for events
An omnichannel strategy is worth exploring as part of a brand or marketing campaign. Events can contribute to and enhance an omnichannel campaign.
Events as part of Omnichannel strategy
By their nature, events often require the use of multiple channels to both lead visitors up to event attendance and to reinforce messaging and follow-up after the event has taken place.
Coherence of brand identity and campaign messaging is paramount to providing a joined-up, seamless experience, and taking an omnichannel approach will offer the best way to achieve this.
The old adage states that people must see your message seven times for it to sink in. With this in mind, it’s clear that providing consistency across a wide range of channels that your intended audience often utilizes will help achieve this with a larger proportion of them.
And as a golden opportunity to interact with your audience in a direct, memorable way, ensuring the coherence of your omnichannel campaign at your event is a great way to impress your message upon them.
Consider your campaign objective
Thinking in omnichannel terms when planning your next event allows you to put your best effort into providing that coherent experience. While deals done on event day are one marker for event success, impressing upon your visitors a campaign or brand message that is effectively reinforced and reiterated via other channels, post-event is another.
When someone who has visited your event is later exposed to a corresponding message in another channel, be it social media, email, digital advertising, or anything else, it will act as a reminder of the positive “real-world” experience they had on the day. Events represent the possibility of a tangible experience being linked to these other, potentially more distant-feeling, channels. This gives your message greater impact, improving response and conversion rates, enhancing the longevity of your event's success, and helping your overarching campaign reach its objective.
How omnichannel can improve event success
For many marketers, events make up a significant portion of budgets. As such, they demand similarly significant effort and planning to ensure the best possible ROI. Where other channels may provide lower-cost access to individuals, but with a potentially less directly engaged response (we’re looking at you, social media), events are the counterpoint.
Events may need a higher initial outlay, but the relative response per person can be much greater. Attendees of an event can interact face-to-face with the brand. This level of engagement builds strong bonds between brands and their audiences and can often be the defining factor in purchase decisions. In B2B at the very least, people still often buy from people.
While some event visitors may well be new to the brand, for many, an event represents a point in the buying journey much closer to the end of the sales funnel. An omnichannel strategy provides coherent steps along that journey that guide prospects toward the end goal of becoming customers. In a B2B environment, events often offer the first real chance of that direct real-world interaction between the brand and the audience.
An example
Consider two different approaches to inviting your audience to an event. In this example, we’ll imagine a B2B organization running a launch event:
- You mine your database for relevant contacts and send them an email invite. You also post several times on your social media channels to advertise your event and send an internal memo to your staff asking them to invite their key contacts. People register and attend your event. Afterward, you send a thank-you to those who attended.
This could be considered a success.
- You identify your specific target audience for this event. You create a campaign with messaging based on their specific needs and use this to inform a sustained social campaign on their favorite platforms, enticing signups for further information. You follow this up with an email campaign that uses the same campaign creative and messaging, providing insightful content and counting down to launch day.
You create paid search campaigns around the specific keywords you know your audience will seek. The social posts, digital ads, and emails drive visits to your website, which houses the same creative style and provides further insight for those who sign up. Using the same creative theme, you advertise in a targeted print publication offering a referral from their digital version and banner space on their website. As a local campaign, you may rent billboard space and organize a flyer drop, all following the same creative angle, key hero messaging, and content.
You monitor which channels see the most sign-ups through tracking code in digital campaigns and targeted URLs through print. You tweak and change your campaign to focus on successful channels and amend those that aren’t doing well.
Every element sings together, and every element drives the anticipation of the event. Not only do you successfully drive more people to your event, but when they get there, they’re truly engaged and excited to see what the event has in store for them. The event itself doesn’t disappoint because your campaign’s look and feel are mirrored in how you present your event, including any AV, printed collateral, and anything else: one consistent, creative theme.
After the event, you follow up with your visitors and those who registered but didn’t attend, with targeted, personalized communications that continue to follow the campaign brief, delivering additional valuable insights and information. As a result, you continue to see ROI long after the event itself has finished.
The second approach would deliver a much greater impact. The first example is an event that uses some multichannel communication for invites. The second is a strategic omnichannel campaign. The key difference is planning and campaign management.
![omnichannel marketing first steps](/sites/default/files/styles/column_content_width/public/image/2021-09/pexels-christina-morillo-1181355.jpg?itok=cQZaQce0)
First Steps
Know your audience
The first step in developing an omnichannel strategy is defining and understanding your target audiences. By building comprehensive audience personas for each of your targets, you’ll understand where they spend their time. In other words, you’ll know which platforms and channels should be the primary targets for your omnichannel campaign efforts. This could include:
- Website
- Social media
- Owned apps
- Digital advertising
- Radio & TV advertising
- Point of Sale display
- Outdoor advertising
- Events
By getting to know your target audience, you’ll understand which platforms you need to have a presence on and can assign a weighting of importance to each of them. You should also map out the journey that your audience takes from one channel to another and, in doing so, better understand their thought process. This can help you fine-tune campaign messaging appropriately for each platform.
Get your message straight
This is an incredibly important step. Take the time to clearly define your campaign’s core message and what you want to achieve. Create a comprehensive campaign document that provides real clarity in both the objective of the campaign and the key messages to use as a central point of reference for anyone who will be part of the execution of the campaign. Something that may seem obvious to you may not be as clear to others, so having these spelled out removes the potential for misinterpreting the brief. This then reduces the need for multiple rounds of revision on campaign assets internally, or worse, misunderstood messaging making its way into the live campaign.
When defining this campaign document, get input from the key stakeholders managing the channels you want to use, as they’ll understand the best methods for communicating the message in each case. For example, you may need some longer-format content for your blog, but some concise video or imagery to use on social media. Create a list of the assets you’ll need, owners, and deadlines. You’ll be much better if all your campaign elements are ready to go before you start.
Taking a lesson from Aristotle
Aristotle’s triptych of “tell them you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you’ve told them” is a phrase about the effectiveness of repeating your message to your audience and is worth remembering. It’s stood the test of time for a reason.
In omnichannel event marketing terms, it can be translated into “make sure you communicate pre, during, and post-event.” So, once you’ve identified the relevant channels for your audience, ensure that your campaign plans include a communications strategy that extends either side of your event date.
Get personal
Wherever you can, get personal with your audience. By getting to know your audience, you’ll be able to provide a message that resonates that much better with them. If you’re using email marketing, for example, segmenting your data based on a range of demographics will allow you to tailor your message (as well as add personalized salutations!).
With paid search advertising, you could run a range of ads based on the different search terms that each audience is more likely to search for. Many digital ad platforms will also provide a way to segment the target audience and serve various ads to them. Use the functionality available to create more personalized, targeted messages.
Be prepared to adapt
While your campaign document should be your first port of call for all your activities, you should be prepared to test and change your approach. Having a flexible outlook allows you to see what’s working and what’s not and adapt accordingly. Ultimately, this allows you to get better results by either tweaking your messaging or re-focusing your efforts on your more successful channels.
Tying it all together
Omnichannel marketing allows you to achieve the best possible results from your events. And equally, as the live crescendo to your campaign, events can be a fantastic way to help achieve your omnichannel marketing objectives.
Just as every event is different, the omnichannel approach you’ll need to take will depend on your key objectives and target audience.
By taking the time to understand both of these factors at the start, you can develop comprehensive omnichannel campaigns that will elevate your events to an entirely new level.
![Olivia Cal Headshot](/sites/default/files/styles/focus_scale_and_crop_300x300/public/image/2023-08/Olivia%20Cal%20Headshot.jpg?h=1819a79a&itok=nAHGkAwE)
Olivia Cal
Olivia is a copywriter and content marketer specializing in hospitality, events, and retail. After five years of in-house experience, she now works independently, writing articles, eBooks, case studies, and more for a wide range of clients.