What is ex­per­i­en­tial marketing?

Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing involves using memorable and in­ter­act­ive events to create an emotional con­nec­tion between customers and your brand. It can con­trib­ute to brand awareness and help increase your profits. But to pull off ex­per­i­en­tial marketing in a way that justifies the costs and effort involved, you’ll need to know exactly what your goals and metrics are.

What’s the defin­i­tion of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing?

Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing is a marketing strategy that directly engages customers through memorable and unique ex­per­i­ences, such as hands-on activ­it­ies at events. Much like emotional branding, the goal is to create an emotional con­nec­tion between customers and a brand or product. Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing aims to improve customer loyalty and boost brand awareness in order to increase profits.

In contrast to tra­di­tion­al marketing, ex­per­i­en­tial marketing isn’t so much about selling products or ad­vert­ising a brand. Similar to social selling, ex­per­i­en­tial marketing aims to get customers toassociate positive feelings with a product or company. And so the more creative, en­ter­tain­ing and unique an ex­per­i­ence marketing event is, the more likely it is that customers will use a product or want to know more about a brand.

Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing is closely connected with the customer journey, which also centres positive customer ex­per­i­ences, with the goal of in­creas­ing trust in a brand and winning repeat customers. That’s why customer journey mapping is an important tool for planning your ex­per­i­en­tial marketing strategy.

Why is ex­per­i­en­tial marketing so effective?

Tra­di­tion­al marketing methods that treat customers like passive re­cip­i­ents of a brand’s message are becoming less and less effective due to ad blockers and ad-free streaming services. Ex­per­i­ence marketing, on the other hand, makes it possible for brands to directly involve their customers in campaigns and create closer con­nec­tions with them.

Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing is effective because humans are emotional beings: emotions form an important part of our ex­per­i­ences and influence our behaviour and decisions. If a brand speaks to us on an emotional level, we’re much more likely to buy their products and become loyal customers.

Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing is nothing new, it’s been around for years. That being said, it’s seen a lot of change and de­vel­op­ment recently, in part due to global events such as the corona pandemic. Ad­di­tion­ally, the rise of virtual reality and augmented reality has created new op­por­tun­it­ies for ex­per­i­en­tial marketing. Now users can par­ti­cip­ate in virtual ex­per­i­ence marketing events from home. This can lead to an increase in your brand’s reach if users choose to share their ex­per­i­ences on social media. Much like referral marketing, this can auto­mat­ic­ally lead to higher customer ac­quis­i­tion. Some ad­di­tion­al benefits of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing include:

• Increase in brand awareness
• Better customer retention
• Increase in en­gage­ment
• Increase in virality on social media channels
• Gen­er­at­ing searches
• Increase in sales con­ver­sions

What are some examples of ex­per­i­ence marketing?

There are various forms of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaigns. They can take place offline or online in the form of brand events, pop-up stores, workshops, webinars or curated ex­per­i­ences in virtual reality/augmented reality. While some campaigns are best suited to specific kinds of products, others can work for almost any company. Aside from how suitable a campaign is for your brand or product, the ex­per­i­en­tial marketing tech­niques you choose will likely be de­term­ined by your budget, goals and target group. Below we’ll introduce some of the most popular forms of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing.

Event marketing

Event marketing aims to build an emotional con­nec­tion between a product or brand and a customer via events like product launches, festivals and workshops. This form of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing helps with customer ac­quis­i­tion and long-term customer retention. A unique marketing event can also help increase brand awareness. To make an event suc­cess­ful, you should ensure that as many people as possible hear about it and that they know what it’s all about (for example, who can par­ti­cip­ate and what they can expect if they go).

Guerrilla marketing campaigns

Guerrilla marketing is another effective ex­per­i­en­tial marketing technique for creating an emotional con­nec­tion with customers. The goal of this type of campaign is to surprise customers by using un­con­ven­tion­al means to grab their attention. Their resulting curiosity will lead them to engage more closely with the product or brand.

The key to success for this kind of event lies in de­term­in­ing the best time and place so you can be sure that your target audience is present. A guerrilla marketing strategy should con­cen­trate on the people that are most likely to be in­ter­ested in your product or brand and are most likely to make a purchase.

Pop-up stores

Pop-up stores are one of the most well-known and popular forms of ex­per­i­ence marketing. A pop-up store happens when a brand takes over a physical space for a limited time to present or sell their product. They can be in res­taur­ants, bars, galleries, classic store­fronts in shopping districts or in malls or unique spaces like house boats or empty in­dus­tri­al buildings. Pop-up stores give you the chance to get creative and ex­per­i­ment with how you present your brand or product. They’re also a great op­por­tun­ity to increase brand awareness and give potential customers a fun way to get to know your company.

Augmented reality

You can also create memorable and unique ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaigns with augmented reality. With AR tech­no­logy, customers can immerse them­selves in a virtual world where they can, for example, test new products or even try on clothes. Augmented reality can also be used to create games and in­ter­act­ive apps.

One suc­cess­ful example is Nike’s game Nikeland, where customers can create their own avatar, buy clothing and ac­cessor­ies, and take part in community events.

Co-branding

With co-branding, two or more brands come together to create an ex­per­i­en­tial marketing event that each brand will benefit from. The goal of this strategy is to increase the brand awareness of each brand and get in contact with new target groups. Co-branding in the context of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing can take the form of a shared pop-up store, in which a col­lab­or­at­ive product line is sold. In order for a co-branding campaign to be suc­cess­ful, you need a strong brand and com­pre­hens­ive marketing.

Product demon­stra­tions

In a product demon­stra­tion, products are presented in a way that makes customers feel spoken to, creating a positive con­nec­tion with the brand. Product demon­stra­tions can happen in pop-up stores, at workshops or in virtual spaces (with the help of augmented reality). Having a person test out a product themself will allow them to better un­der­stand its qualities and benefits. This makes the strategy par­tic­u­larly well suited to marketing for online stores or for brands that sell products online. It enables customers to get a better sense of your product and brings them closer to making a purchase.

Apple uses this kind of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing with their offline Genius Bars, where customers can get detailed in­tro­duc­tions to Apple products.

How to plan an ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaign

There are a number of things you should take into account when planning an ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaign.

• Identify your target audience: before you start planning your campaign, it’s important that you define your target audience. You won’t be able to decide which kind of ex­per­i­en­tial marketing is best for your brand until you know your target group and what sort of events they will react to best.

• Set goals: what do you want to achieve with your ex­per­i­en­tial marketing strategy? The type of campaign you should use will vary depending on whether you want to find new customers, advertise a product or enter a new market. It’s also important to define which values and ex­per­i­ences you want to convey with your brand.

• Identify your USP: you’ll need to know your unique selling pro­pos­i­tion in order to stand out from the com­pet­i­tion and create a unique campaign for your brand or product. Your USP will also help you make important decisions about the design and nature of your campaign.

• Plan a budget: you’ll need to set a budget for your ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaign to ensure that you get a return on your in­vest­ment (ROI). This is es­pe­cially important when it comes to ex­per­i­ence marketing campaigns because they often involve an elaborate and cost-intensive marketing mix.

• Create a cross-channel marketing plan: if your ex­per­i­en­tial marketing event is taking place offline, think about how you can market it online as well. For example, you can create posts and live streams on social media. That way you’ll be able to increase your reach to customers that can’t be there in person.

What should you avoid when it comes to ex­per­i­en­tial marketing?

An ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaign can easily fall flat without the right strategy and pre­par­a­tion. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to make an event too sales oriented. As mentioned above, ex­per­i­en­tial marketing is first and foremost about creating unique, positive ex­per­i­ences. If your customers get the feeling that you’re just trying to sell as much as possible, that can give them a negative feeling about your brand that they may then share on social media. That’s why you should con­cen­trate on making your event as branded as possible.

Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing might be slowly replacing the AIDA model, but you should still think carefully before launching your campaign. Spe­cific­ally, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the campaign fit your brand?
• Do you have the time and budget to suc­cess­fully execute an ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaign?
• Can an ex­per­i­ence-oriented marketing campaign help you to achieve your goals?
• Is your campaign relevant for your target group?

Before you plan your ex­per­i­en­tial marketing campaign, you should thor­oughly analyse each of these points to ensure that the effort and costs involved will pay off for your brand.

Summary: use ex­per­i­en­tial marketing to achieve success

Ex­per­i­en­tial marketing enables brands to connect more closely with customers through in­ter­act­ive events and unique ex­per­i­ences. This can help boost brand awareness and increase profits. What’s more, in many cases, these events can also be im­ple­men­ted online with a low budget.

However, suc­cess­ful ex­per­i­en­tial marketing requires you to be willing to take risks and have the courage to explore new and un­con­ven­tion­al paths. In many cases, these risks pay off. The found­a­tion for success comes from carefully planning a unique campaign that’s perfectly tailored to your brand or product.