Experiential marketing is a form of advertising that gives your audience the opportunity to engage with the brand face-to-face, in a more creative manner. Giving them the chance to feel, taste, smell, discuss and experience a brand, rather than passively seeing an ad on a phone screen or a billboard.

Experiential can be anything from pop-up stores, festival stands, workshops and demonstrations, sampling, brand personnel, having a stall at a trade show or even hosting VR/AR experiences. There are some great benefits to this style of marketing:

Awareness 

If you pick your locations well, experiential can allow you to build brand awareness with relevant audiences. Not only will it create a memorable experience and cement your brand's name into someone's mind, but can also provide the opportunity for people to actually try your product without and long consideration that might come before a first purchase. 

Engagement 

The main area where experiential really excels beyond other strategies is its ability to create meaningful engagement. Allowing your audience to create a lasting memory of your brand, tied into their own emotional response, is a great way of forging relationships with your target market and inspiring brand loyalty. 

Social media and Online discourse 

Not only will you get your brand in front of a physical audience, but can also turn these audiences into advocates, sharing your brand across their social network, further driving the reach of the campaign and sometimes producing user-generated content.

The more unique the campaign, the more likely you are to gain online traction and even, dare I say it, go viral. If the overall campaign is centred around a creative out of the box idea, or ties in nicely to current trends, new technologies or hot topics, it is more likely to generate free PR from social channels, industry publications and word of mouth. 

Experiential can be used for any audience, in most environments, such as key business people in business hubs, offices, rail and underground stations, students in their halls of residence, student unions, and universities and then also general mass audiences, through most other environments such as malls, shopping centres, supermarkets, high streets, blocks of flats etc.

Experiential marketing is a powerful tool for driving engagement and inspiring brand loyalty, especially when supported by a multi-channel strategy. You can provide vouchers or redeemable collateral for potential customers to take away, further driving engagement, site traffic and potential sales. 

To learn more about Experiential Marketing, get in contact today.