6 Steps to Get the Most from Experiential Marketing

There's no shortage of brands running experiential activations where they’re giving away samples, holding contests, and the like. Every one of these activation put a burden on the time and resources of marketing departments. Also, hosting activations is expensive, which means ensuring you get the most from experiential dollars is of high importance. The following easy strategies will help you get the most from experiential marketing and every dollar you spend.

Experiential events should multitask.

Create a multi-pronged experience where you’re also collecting data at all activations you host. This allows you to engage a multitude of different strategies and collect more data so you're maximizing your dollars spent. To get the most from experiential make sure to incorporate data capture into samplings, surveys with lifestyle activations or any other type of synergy.

Tracking brand ambassador performance.

Tracking performance is critical to determine your top performing brand ambassadors. It allows you to incentivize your top performers, while dealing with trouble spots to help maximize your marketing dollars. Bring in your top performers for important activations to ensure that you're getting the biggest bang for your buck and capturing the most leads possible.

Using templates.

One of the best ways to make the most of your experiential dollars is NOT to have your digital activations created from scratch. Avoid coding and building applications, websites, and emails from the ground up. Instead, find a template that fits (or can be modified slightly to fit) your brand guidelines. With a template approach, you can simply change images and logos, and your templates will look beautiful and fit your brand guidelines, while being customized and feel fresh and new for each experience.

Finding a platform made for experiential marketing.

Experiential marketing is unique, and you need a software solution that can handle your activation from start to finish—from mobile applications, to websites, to emails. It's important to find technology that will expedite the process, and make it more effective and more efficient for you to build your campaigns and reduce your time to market. By making your brand more effective and more nimble, you can maximize where you're spending your experiential marketing dollars as a whole.

Personalized follow-ups and marketing after the event.

Personalization helps consumers feel like every experience is built uniquely for them. This promotes greater affinity and helps improve short and long term returns from experiential activations. You need to leverage your live activation to capture data and then follow up after the experience through social media to increase brand awareness for those who didn't attend live. This helps your money go further, because you’re extending the experience beyond a one-time event. That money spent can then grow your database, will boost marketing initiatives, increase your email marketing drift, and continue to help you market and sell beyond the actual event itself.

Adding experiential marketing to existing opportunities.

If you’re running sponsorships at a sporting event, or giving out free product samples on the street, adding an experiential marketing component and capturing valuable consumer data allows you to take dedicated costs and exponentially improve your return on investment and objectives.

In short, you need to get the most from your experiential dollars, and use them for as many possible opportunities and events as possible.