EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING and Why It Rocks!
Give people a brand experience that they'll remember forever
Experiential events transform people into brand advocates
Generate content of people blissfully connecting with your brand
Experiential marketing helps companies stand out in competitive environments
Leverage social and influencers to reach people beyond the event
Track your experiential marketing impact via engagement, social, and sales
What is experiential marketing?
Experiential marketing leverages multi-sensory, real-world experiences to transform people into customers.
Often companies and agencies utilize other terms for experiential, ranging from brand activations to event marketing.
Experiential marketing can take many forms, such as events, pop-up shops, product demonstrations, interactive installations, and more.
The goal is to create a personal connection between people and your brand to increase loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and, ultimately, sales.
Ideal experiential marketing provides emotional, meaningful, and transformative experiences.
Experiential marketing can be a single event, a year-long campaign, or an ongoing initiative.
Concepts typically include brand demonstrations, product sampling, activities, performances, and other sensorial experiences.
Experiential marketing events occur outdoors in public spaces, inside venues, at festivals, sports arenas, beaches, and other locations.
These events attract attention, engage people, bring your story to life, and influence brand attitude and purchase behavior.
Experiential marketing events are utilized by Business-to-Consumer (BTC), Direct-to-Consumer (DTC), Business-to-Business (B2B), nonprofits, and healthcare companies.
It is particularly effective for products or services that are new or innovative, as it allows people to experience the benefits of the brand first-hand.
Experiential activations can be designed for a single location, a few cities on the same day, or as a national tour.
Social media, influencer marketing, and livestream elements are integral elements to successful experiential marketing campaigns.
Experiential marketing builds community, sales, and superfans!
Experiential marketing services
1.) Story-centric experiential concepts to accomplish specific goals
2.) Brand experience planning and design
3.) Event asset production (e.g., Instagramable displays, tents, stages, booths, lighting, etc.)
4.) Brand activity creation (e.g., games, prize wheel, Instagramable installations, photo booth, etc.)
5.) Experiential marketing producers based in NYC, LA, and Chicago
6.) Event location scouting, negotiation, and contracting
7.) City or venue permit process
8.) Event assets storage, transport, and installation
9.) Securing and training brand ambassadors
10.) Outfits and props production
11.) Experiential event preproduction
12.) Liability insurance certificates
13.) Event safety, security, and insurance
14.) Videographers and photographers
15.) Production of marketing materials and giveaways
16.) Event install, activation, and uninstall (often happening all in a single day)
17.) Performer, press, celebrity, and influencer handlers and management
18.) Track impressions, engagements, feedback, KPIs, and CPIs
19.) Recap and recommendations for future events
How to measure the effectiveness of experiential marketing
There are 100+ metrics to measure the success of your experiential marketing campaign; here's your guide to the top key performance indicators (KPIs):
Pre-Event Exposure - Measure brand exposure via event promotion coverage, impressions, attendance, and social media (e.g., content, comments, shares, follows, live-streams, etc.)
Dwell Time - Dwell time at an event refers to the time guests decide to spend at your brand event - it is a high indicator of people's interest, enjoyment, and engagement. You can measure this manually or with various technologies.
Direct Sales - Track your sales before, during, and after your event. Often brands sell products onsite and incentivize purchases post-event with promo codes.
First-party data - Ensure your experiential marketing makes an effort to collect people's information. You can easily do this with chance-to-win giveaways, photobooths (where people plug in their emails to receive photos), and app sign-up incentives.
Engagement - Brand engagement is what experiential marketing events are all about. You can measure engagement via the type of brand activities (e.g., demos, games, sampling, etc.) they participated in, and social media engagement by those at the event.
Community - Measure how your experiential marketing event affects your brand community, from Twitter to Twitch.
Perception - Increasing how your target audience perceives your brand before and after the experiential campaign is a KPI to watch. Track brand perception via event exit surveys, focus groups, and social media sentiment analysis.
Loyalty - Evaluating if your experiential marketing events affect brand loyalty is challenging. However, if you track those attending to see if they become repeat purchasers is one way or if you host several experiential marketing events in a city, you can measure general customer retention rates over time.
Event Coverage - Experiential marketing campaigns can generate significant earned media, including news articles, influencers, and social media mentions. Tracking the volume and tone of the coverage can help evaluate the campaign's effectiveness on marketing KPIs.
Return on Investment (ROI) - At the end of the day, ROI is what it's about. Calculate ROI by comparing the costs of the campaign to the revenue or value generated over a specific timeline.
Overall, measuring the effectiveness of experiential marketing requires a multi-faceted approach that considers both quantitative and qualitative data. Using a combination of metrics, you can evaluate the campaign's impact on brand awareness, customer engagement, sales, and overall ROI.
How to prepare for experiential marketing campaign
1.) Outline your goals
2.) Focus on story-centric and multi-sensory experiences people will get excited about
3.) Design your experiences around a unifying brand theme
4.) Research and secure locations where your audience commutes, shops, or socializes
5.) Allow 3+ months for permitting and production
6.) Integrate experiential marketing event elements (e.g. signage, tents, etc.) that get noticed from afar
7.) Include participatory social sharing opportunities
8.) Budget for event asset fabrication, storage, people, preproduction, transport, installation, uninstall, and disposal
9.) Create an in-house team to produce or share a request for proposal (RFP) with several experiential agencies
Environmental impact and social sustainability
Keep environmental and social sustainability top-of-mind when producing your experiential marketing events.
Aim for a regenerative marketing event - creating a new positive impact.
While regenerative marketing isn't always attainable, utilizing recyclable, eco-conscious materials and donate one-time-use outfits and furniture to local charities is a good start.
Diversity, equity, & inclusion
Explore how experiential marketing choices affects people from the perspective of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
This applies to guests, staff, sponsors, influencers, press, vendors, and local communities.
Ensure you create your event environment where everyone is treated with respect.
A well-planned DEI experiential marketing event includes:
- A bias-free environment
- Paying people a living wage
- ADA compliance
- Community outreach and contribution
- Culturally and gender-diverse talent, guests, and workforce
Being purposeful and intentional with your experiential event planning will create better outcomes for everyone involved.
National Coverage
Experiential marketing events are possible in every major US city including:
New York City
Los Angeles
Chicago
Boston
Miami
San Francisco
Experiential Marketing Onboarding
1.) Share your ideas, inspirations, and brand goals
2.) Receive a complimentary experiential marketing event proposal within 5 days
3.) Set a time to chat about how to improve the concepts or explore other ideas
4.) Coalesce around a concept that meets all your brand goals
5.) Approve your experiential marketing agreement
6.) Start up experiential marketing planning, prep, design, fabrication, and logistical coordination to bring your concept life
Takeaways
Experiential marketing helps your brand create desirable and measurable outcomes.
Focus on concepts that delight as well as communicate why your brand matters.
Experiential marketing is an investment; do your research, take ample time, and find the right people to bring your ideas to life.
Connect
Share your brand and goals for a complimentary experiential marketing recommendation.
Explore More
The experiential marketing event information and examples on this page are elaborate, event-centric productions.
For smaller scale activations, view how Sampling Bikes & Carts can bring your ideas to life.
And, if you'd like to create an around-the-city presence, be sure to review Experiential Marketing Vehicle.
Experiential Marketing FAQ
Experiential marketing immerses people in positive real-world experiences to achieve specific brand objectives. Experiential marketing takes on many forms, from pop-up shops to outdoor events to brand activation.
Your experiential marketing activation should lean heavily on sensorial experiences - taste, touch, smell, physical activity, learning, etc.
Experiential marketing is a practical way to create new customers, deepen relationships with existing ones, and turn people into brand advocates.
Experiential marketing is a good investment as people remember and are influenced by it more than any other tactic.
Positive physical interactions are proven to influence people's brand perceptions and purchase behavior, plus turn people into advocates.
Experiential marketing delivers on every brand metric; awareness, perception, interest, engagement, social, advocacy, leads, content, insights, and sales.
If you evaluate your investment on brand outcomes - from impressions to experiences to content to community to revenue - you'll find experiential marketing proves its worth.
Experiential marketing strategy is an insight-driven plan to bring your brand story, message, and benefits to life in front desired audiences. It is people-focused and goal-orientated.
The best experiential marketing strategies involve stimulating, participatory, educational, and joyful experiences.
Here's your experiential marketing strategy planning guide:
- Start with defining what you hope to achieve with your experiential marketing campaign.
- Know your target audience well, as it will help you create experiences that resonate with them.
- Develop a creative concept that will spark attention, interest, and engagement.
- Create a production plan, including the location scouting, timeline, build-outs, transport, installation, staffing, prep, activation, and post-production.
- Consider how you will measure success and collect feedback from participants.
- Execute the experience: Make sure everything runs smoothly, and participants have a positive experience.
- Measure success and refine your strategy to improve future campaigns.
Experiential marketing cost varies widely, depending on the concept, size, scope, location, duration, and people resources required to bring it to life. Smaller experiential events can cost as little as $25,000, while more significant events can exceed 20x that amount.
Experiential marketing events seem like fun parties from the outside. Although, one must account for all the work that goes into creating an wonderful event such as event space rental, production, design costs, fabrication, staffing, travel and transportation fees, technology, equipment rental, marketing materials, and promotion.
With the high cost of producing an experiential marketing event, it is essential to leverage it in every way possible; promotion, influencers, social media, etc.
Contact ALT TERRAIN with your brand goals for a complimentary experiential marketing event proposal.
Experiential marketing activations are measured in a multitude of ways; here are a few to keep on your radar:
- Assess event promotion reach and exposure.
- Count onsite event impressions, attendance, and engagements.
- Track onsite sales and post-event via promo codes.
- Survey social media coverage and engagement.
- Quantify sign-ups, contest entries, and social media follows.
- Influencer integration, reach, and impact
- Survey people before, during, and post-event via Net Promoter
Overall, experiential marketing measurements are tailored to brand specific KPIs or goals.
Choose your experiential marketing agency based on these key factors:
Expertise - Look for an agency with experience in your industry and cities with a proven track record of success.
Alignment - Select an experiential agency that understands your vision and business goals.
Creativity - Look for an agency with a solid creative team that can offer fresh and innovative ideas that resonate with your audience.
Strategy - A good agency will develop a comprehensive approach to attract, engage, and move people, plus when and where it'll be most effective to activate.
Production - More than half the work happens before your experiential marketing event. Ensure you have an agency with event planning skills, comfortable with fabrication, has on-the-ground people resources in each city, plus well-versed in transportation and warehousing.
Collaboration - Look for an agency that communicates clearly and transparently throughout the experiential marketing process, from planning to execution. They should be able to provide you with regular updates and progress reports, plus opportunities for your team to provide brand insights along the way. Most importantly, find an experiential agency that enjoys what they do!
Budget - Having clear and agreeable budget parameters for your experiential marketing initiative is essential. In addition to setting an overall budget, get granular with allocations fort strategy, planning, production, activation, and management.
Creating an experiential marketing request-for-proposal (RFPs) is an excellent first step. Although, it is best to also have detailed conversations about each of the above elements with agencies of interest.
New York City has dozens of experiential agencies, knowing who is the best depends upon your brand needs.
Here are the top tips for finding the best experiential marketing agency for your company:
- Select an agency with experience in your sector (e.g., DTC, FinTech, fashion, etc.)
- Review their portfolio to see if it aligns with the type, size, and vibe of experiential events you'd like to produce.
- Share brand identity, ideal customers, insights, strategies of interest, creative ideas you may have, budget, and, most importantly, outcomes with your prospective experiential marketing agencies via conversation and a request for proposal (RFP).
- Review each agency's recommendations internally, and set a time to walk through each proposal in person or on a video call.
