Experiential marketing : Creating closer bond between customers and brands .
Experiential Marketing also termed as Engagement marketing ,The premise is to create a closer bond between the consumer and the brand by immersing them in a fun and memorable experience. Experiential marketing is a form of advertising that focuses primarily on helping consumers experience a brand.It helps People In Making Better Decisions And Bring Them Closer To Their Lifestyle.
While traditional advertising (radio, print, television) verbally and visually communicates the brand and product benefits, experiential marketing tries to immerse the consumers within the product by engaging as many other human senses as possible. In this way, experiential marketing can encompass a variety of other marketing strategies from individual sampling to large-scale guerrilla marketing.
Its like providing customer’s Try before buy kind of facility , and for that brands use different strategies as per there requirements and the kind of products they have , it depends on how they are used, the target demographic of the product, and the emotion that the brand wants to associate with itself .
In the end, the goal of experiential marketing is to form a memorable and emotional connection between the consumer and the brand so that it may generate customer loyalty and influence purchase decision.
What can experiential marketing be used for?
- Build relationships
- Raise awareness
- Increase loyalty
- Establish relevance
- Encourage interaction and product trial
- Create memories
- Stimulate positive word of mouth
- Change the mind of dissatisfied customers
- Create product desire
- Verify the target audience
- Increase return on marketing investment
As B. Joseph Pine II and James H. state in their book, The Experience Economy, the number of goods and services has increased making the industry as a whole increasingly competitive and crowded. They illustrate that brands must begin to provide consumers with memorable events and engagements that allow the brand to stand out from the clutter of their competitors. Livy Alvey, in Relationship Marketing, explains further that brands facing identical competitor products can create brand loyalty by focusing on the emotional connection.
Marketers are spending more on experiential even though return on investment measures are murky. According to the Event Marketing Institute’s Event Track study, marketers spent an estimated 4.7% more last year on event and experiential marketing. The study also indicated that experiential is growing faster for companies with more than $1 billion in total revenue, which hiked their experiential budgets 9.8% in 2012.
Now lets take a example of domain where i think this way of marketing will make a huge impact , and its cosmetics .
Cosmetics : I think cosmetics is the section where Experiential Marketing will definitely create a huge impact . From drugstore brands to high-end cosmetics, the global cosmetics and beauty industry is on the rise, expected to reach a total value of $265 billion by 2017. Color cosmetics, hair care, fragrances, and skin care all contribute to this ever changing and evolving marketplace.
Beauty is especially important to the Hispanic community, particularly among females. A Univision study indicates that wearing makeup is a necessity for 69% of Hispanic women compared with 46% of the general population. Additionally, 81% of Hispanic women use multiple beauty products in a day.
So we need to develop experiential marketing programs that engage consumers with beauty brands through product sampling(providing trial samples ), demonstrations, and coupons. From pop-up shops for product launches to mobile marketing tours with street teams of brand ambassadors, each experiential marketing program is activated with the goal to:
- Create awareness, visibility, and recognition
- Drive trial and sales
- Increase retail traffic
Experiential marketing delivers the highest level of consumer engagement of any form of advertising. 74% of consumers report a more positive brand perception after participating in a branded event experience.
As there is a huge scope in this domain for experiential marketing , so some of the Online Companies have given a new way to brands to connect to there customers , and they are really attracting the brands as customers in this era are looking everything online . Today people prefer to buy online , and are investing more time in surfing the net which gives a opportunity to the brands that they can attract more customers to there respective brands through online branding .
Some examples of Online platform which are working in this space :trykaro.com Helping People In Making Better Decisions And Bring Them Closer To Their Lifestyle , birchbox.com etc .
