Experiential Marketing: How Can We deliver Unique Customer Experiences in a Digital World?
By Jenny Stanley, MD + Founder, Appetite Creative 07 Nov 2019
In reality, marketing will always be marketing, and it will always have its role within our lives. But correct and proper use of experiential marketing will add a fun and ultimately memorable experience designed to immerse your users in your brand.
If you're confident in your product or service, a great experience will bring your audience in; if the service is good enough, they'll stay for that.
Even in the digital age, immersive marketing has a lot to gain from using tangible, real-life experiences. A leading example can be found in Lush stores, the great smelling hipster employers that seem to be everywhere now, using in-store experience to reel their customers in. Where else in the world can I go to buy a friends’ birthday present and be treated to an exfoliating hand wash that will leave me smelling like tea tree oil and blueberries?
It's attractive, it's engrossing, it's fun, and it makes us both want to go back and spend a bit more than we should. The experience accentuates the details of the products on offer and brings the user closer to their benefits by enabling them to see first hand (no pun intended) what a lovely feeling it can bring.
From the marketers' point of view, or rather from the marketers' bosses' point of view, the role of experience marketing is to create a defined plan to capture the consumer and not slip into the abyss of complacency. A modern marketing plan requires the inclusion of a large number of disciplines, and experience marketing has recently been added to this list.
How new is this, though?
Think of the Pepsi challenge; it depresses me to write that this is now almost 45 years old. It is fair to say that more than one company has followed the path of experience to create a link for a long time.
A newer path begins at the intersection of the experiential and the digital, presenting new opportunities for marketers. Combining the digital and the real when it comes to experiential marketing spells impact; at Appetite Creative, we had an inkling that this would be the case.
Our Augmented Reality Treasure Hunt for Vodafone used a Smartphone digital map amid a real location setting, guiding players in circuit around Dundrum Town Centre with four cryptic clues, began and concluded in the Vodafone store. With an aim of driving footfall to store, 73 participants and queues outside the Vodafone shop certainly achieved this, with one winner receiving a brand new iPhone.
Social media, of course, now has had a part to play in this, and its effects shouldn't be ignored. Our obsession with finding something worthy of sending to our network of contacts is among the main reasons that experiential campaigns are such a useful marketing technique.
In the Vodafone case, our treasure hunt secured 411 Instagram likes along with a huge message thread and almost 300 articles covering it, illustrating that the engagement value of experiential campaigns is by no means limited to the physical spaces they may take place in. With the assistance of social media, experiential marketing can become a tool for attracting attention in digital spaces too.
Quick, simple sharing with a swipe or touch of a button is what marketers want. It means that their own users are doing the door to door sales for them; for free.
They are digitally knocking on their friends' doors and opening their suitcases to show off your product. Far more convincing than a needy salesman trying to hit commission, friends excited to share something cool they just found online are critical agents of experiential marketing . It's a staggeringly good opportunity that cannot be missed.
By encouraging and pandering to the need to share everything instantly with anyone we've ever met, we can offer this experience to far more people, redressing experiential marketing for the digital world. Add a voucher to a marketing campaign and have a button to link directly to WhatsApp.
You may have a group of friends or a family group who might also like the deal; it would almost be rude not to share.
At Appetite Creative, we were the first global agency to integrate Whatsapp sharing into banner ads, which we did for British Airways. Users could share the brand, discounts or offers with personal contacts in Whatsapp, or even start a conversation directly with the brand.
This enabled British Airways to appear directly into their audiences mobile phones through the actions of users, cutting out the boring salesy parts and instead initiating customer experiences through social sharing. The vast array of options within this are for the marketers' creativity to find.
The same can be done with online competitions or mini-games, which work equally to initiate customer experiences and in turn increase audience engagement.
To aid the launch of a new dairy-free alternative by Swiss dairy company Emmi we built an interactive, location-sensitive online quiz experience. Users could join in by purchasing an Emmi product and using their mobile to scan a unique one-use only code on the packaging.
At the outset, users could view an infographic informing users the exact amount of sunlight in their area that day. They could then complete a quick, but informative quiz about Emmi’s health benefits to enter a prize draw for an Apple Watch, with winners drawn every two days.
With the average dwell time on quiz page amounting to 2:07min and a 94% quiz completion rate, this piece of online experiential marketing was certainly a success in engaging customers and bringing them closer to the brand.
Although the formula is straightforward, campaigns with an experiential dimension are undeniably impactful, personalising customer relations immeasurably. Through new ways of reaching out to the consumer, they have enjoyed dramatically increased success.
Marketing agencies have endeavoured to create moments in which the consumer receives a surprise in the form of an experience, whether that be in-store or online.
The user must feel special, valuable, excited, or entertained. We must be innovative and unusual in the ways we create conditions for the experience to be shared.
Chat with Jenny and the Appetite Creative team at their picnic table at MAD//Fest London on 13-14 Nov.