We’ve had a tough time, the past couple of years owing to the pandemic but now though it remains to spur up now and then it would not be untrue to say that we’ve been able to control it to a certain extent.
We have been through the worst and as business as usual resumes fully it should not come as a surprise that the demand for experiential marketing is surfacing and even before the pandemic, has already shown a trend of increased engagement and acceptance by the customers.
The brand experiences and the events hosted by celebrities, sports stars, or other influencers are already very popular and are projected to gain even more popularity in the coming years.
Real-life experiences create happy memories for the customers and that has shown to contribute a lot in increased conversions or sales. Even with the current physical distancing and socializing norms in place.
This summer the events and shows conducted even in the UK had some experiential marketing trends in place to push and drive the new social distancing measures.
A huge dancefloor got replaced with dancefloor boxes in silos as bars and other food or drink-related outlets went back to the age-old tradition of sitting down to ensure a select few were using the space at a given time. And boy, it did work positively.
In this article, we shall discuss what the new world market will be like and how an experiential marketing agency can help you achieve what you plan to.
So, What Does This Mean For Businesses?
Businesses need to understand that virtual and hybrid experiences are equally effective if not more, as compared to traditional marketing in terms of everything, particularly ROI. The current consumer demands are dynamic. Everchanging and metamorphosing to newer trends and needs.
Incorporating advanced technological aspects into the experiences to make them come to life. Customers today are always on the lookout to try out newer things and be a part of the experience fully aware that these have been cooked up for them as per their needs and current world scenario.
Using tech installations to showcase the future of retail to using AI and VR to try out a dress or any other item, rather than a confined changing room. Every new technology is being made to keep up with the new risk management norms forced on to the new world, post-covid.
And, What Do The Customers Need To Know About And Prepare For?
Well, just enjoy it, to begin with. Synchronizing your hand-held device with the store, lets you have access to the recommendations for you. Also, the experiences become custom made, beginning from the type of music playing to the preferences of clothing and even food and drinks depending on the type of store.
Utilizing technological innovations in an experiential campaign allows for much more engagement as the customers get to interact in a more interpersonal way. More than a year has passed with people meeting each other on Zoom and fatigued out of using no-contact tech gadgets and video calls for everything. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, just that they are intrusive and not very simple to use.
The new tech has made customers more curious and open to new ideas. Customers are willing now to start using newer and innovative tech to have a better experience, just if the installations are simple to use and do not intrude in their daily lives.
This is when marketers should approach experiential marketing differently in a way that needs to be created considering it is currently more easy to gain the attention of interested buyers.
This is a time when customers and buyers are slowly moving out of their accommodations and into the world after a long time and even possibly for the first time since the pandemic hit. Worth mentioning is that the majority of these customers are more curious about brand activations.
Though the future may be uncertain and long-term planning is not the norm anymore marketers still would need to embrace unconventional ideas and more fun. When customers are entertained where least expected and in public spaces, it creates many positive memories and an overall positive experience.
At the same time, the pandemic is still at large and hence monitoring of these virtual experiences will be crucial to the overall wellness and experience of the customer.
As a brand, reconnecting with your customers after a long time should be the ultimate target, but you could always pry for better. Maybe increased engagement or even more conversion to sales for a higher ROI.
But, How Can An Experiential Marketing Agency Help You?
Reports indicate that the attention spans of people are on a decreasing trend. Just ask yourself, how long does it take for you to click another video if you don’t connect to the one you just clicked on, on Youtube. As a business, you will always want to capture your customers’ attention in this screen-addicted, fast scrolling landscape.
Digital marketing is very essential and it would not be far-fetched to say it is one of the most essential in today’s marketing world. Any business that wants to grow online is on a spree to increase its online presence, and efforts are not paying off as they should because of an oversaturated market among others.
An average teen in the USA checks out their smartphone around 80-100 times in about 24 hours (including mid-nap checks). But it's also a fact that most of the content is overlooked, not checked, or missed making it even more cumbersome for brands to be noticed.
An agency knows the current trends and uses their experience to craft out an experiential marketing campaign plan for your business. You may think that it ain’t much to do and your in-house marketing team can handle that easily. You might also need to consider that handling something and excelling in something has a lot of differences, especially in the results.
An agency knows what hits whereas their daily job is all about experiential marketing. There are classic ways like challenges, games, pop-ups, or product demos and customized versions like installations, activations, etc. There is a fine line of difference between PR building and experiential marketing, however, in certain cases, they may interconnect or overlap.
As a business, you will not be aware of details about this marketing form as it is not at all easy. Trying an in-house approach will waste your time and money. Time because your marketing team will be engrossed in tasks they have no prior knowledge or required experience about. This trial method will bring out flaws and errors in the process or plan adopted and thus add up more time to correct, in addition to the time taken to plan and execute the campaign to reach the error.
Though your in-house team could be very proficient in doing this and they succeed, you still end up losing money. Let’s agree that you are not hiring anyone additionally and diverting your in-house manpower from their job objectives to the requirements of the campaign, their tasks remain pending or completed but not properly, because of the simple lack of time.
This is why we suggest you hire an experiential marketing agency to take care of what they do best while your manpower invest their time and you invest your money into things that they do best. An agency that knows what they are doing will be much more efficient and effective when it comes to enhancing interactiveness and upping the engagement quotient.
An agency knows best how to create a mutually beneficial interaction between your brand and your target customers using engagement methods that are branded to create fond memories of the association and increase conversions.
A successful experiential marketing agency knows what to do, how to do and when to do it also crafting customizations along the way for increased engagement.
Most times it has been noticed that hiring an agency improves the chances of the stop and look effect. Customers are already known for buying a product when they try it. When this trial happens in a setting that customers prefer to engage in, it leaves a mark.
This boosts sales and funnels, customers, to social media. Utilize the services of an experiential marketing agency to avail these among other advantages from the services on offer.
Before you start make sure you know who you are? What are your brand values? What does your business stand for? And, what makes you unique? Working with an experienced agent will make sure you have these questions answered as they start on your project as they will mostly plan it around your needs, and in the process make you understand what exactly you need.
Final Words
Experiential marketing is all about the experience and using the services of an experiential marketing agency has a higher chance of achieving the targeted returns. This does not mean that you should always hire an agency, rather it means to hire an agency for better and more effective results.
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