In a fickle marketplace where affinities can shift with a stiff breeze, experiential marketing agencies must create a voice that stands out from the background chorus of the competition -- all while retaining absolute agility to change the narrative whenever needed.
However, as consumer segments continue to multiply and that chorus grows in volume and audacity, face-to-face marketers are forced to find new ways to engage, track, and convert a shape-shifting audience with a strained attention span and dwindling brand loyalties.
To combat such dynamics, agencies are relying on new avenues in their experiential marketing to help brands differentiate themselves and better hone their message.
No matter the venue or event, these trends will only increase in popularity and impact as they give agencies the capacity to satisfy heightened consumer expectations, continue to push towards digital transformation, and increase ROI while leveraging better ways to gauge it.
Clear, instantaneous communication is now a requisite to any successful experiential marketing endeavor, both between a brand and audience as well as a brand and its agency. An experiential event that is able to communicate data regarding individual consumer affinities with brands and an agency is better equipped to create a more customized marketing approach.
When a brand recognizes, remembers, or makes relevant recommendations to a consumer, they are 75% more likely to make a purchase. In experiential marketing, those critical abilities are driven by a streamlined, efficient communication of consumer data collected both before and during the event. Siloed consumer data between a brand and agency only inhibit that process.
To that point, there has traditionally been a divide between agencies and their client companies. Brands were happy to let agencies be the gatekeepers to the marketing data so needed to inform and guide a message.
But that's all changing.
As both digital communication channels as well as analytics platforms specifically geared towards measuring and reporting experiential marketing continue to get faster, more convenient, and far more efficient than in years past, agencies and brands are adopting a more transparent approach to consumer and event data, creating a greater cohesiveness to action and strategy.
Likewise, as the throughput of data between the two becomes more thorough and frequent, a more symbiotic relationship between brands and agencies will continue to grow. Data is the lifeblood of every experiential marketing campaign, and brands and agencies must work in unison to craft and steer a message in real time or risk losing traction in the marketplace.
If that relationship between brand and agency grew from a more traditional, divided approach, both parties should take necessary steps to rebuild the relationship on a more transparent footing. As entrepreneur and marketing expert Damien Cummings from Econsultancy puts it, "Once a good relationship can be re-established, both sides will be able to have a shared agenda for success and focus on the next steps toward achieving the brand's goals."
With the advancement of VR, AI, cloud, and other technologies that impact experiential marketing in their own ways -- as well as the significant attention they garner -- agencies must stay cognizant of effective solutions already in their experiential marketing toolbox. Likewise, agencies must also develop more efficient measuring tools to stay relevant and leverage that toolbox in the most impactful way possible.
Email, for instance, can be an extremely potent channel for creating a customized message based on specific affinities that are too time-consuming and expensive to recreate elsewhere. When an email campaign uses those affinities to segment the audience and deliver more personalized emails, brands enjoy click-through rates over 100% higher than those in non-segmented email campaigns.
Face-to-face marketing is reliant on connections developing between a brand and consumer to drive ROI. If an audience feels an emotional bond with a message, product, or service, they are far more likely to continue down the sales funnel and drive conversions.
Email campaigns can be highly curated, efficiently distributed, and accurately measured to gauge impact and their effect on ROI. With an average $38 return for every dollar invested on email, experiential marketers can create a personalized message that speaks to specific segments, draws them to events, and magnifies the likelihood for conversions.
New developments in experiential marketing technology have enabled agencies to take these campaigns further by applying segmentation, personalization and other strategies to enhance the consumer experience.
Although VR and AR aren’t newcomers to experiential marketing anymore, they remain a primary focus for agencies trying to create an immersive experience with their unique ability to envelop a user and form powerful bonds between a brand, product, and consumer. That immersive experience has become a critical component of dynamic marketing campaigns aimed at intensifying brand engagement within an audience. Consequently, 90% of global marketers now consider brand experience more capable of delivering audience engagement than other means.
However, a more targeted brand of immersion is taking hold in a wide spectrum of industries, one that allows brands to demonstrate their wares in an entirely practical context. For instance, mattress manufacturers are using concerts and other high-impact, high-energy events to provide attendees the opportunity to get a few hours of sleep and, more importantly, sample the product in a real-world context that forms a potent connection.
Experiential marketing is a dynamic industry that is evolving along with a more demanding, particular audience. Agencies are evolving along with the audience, adapting to both the heightened brand and consumer expectations so integral to today's experiential marketing.
