Marketing done right not only engages your target audience but also builds positive associations with your brand and encourages loyalty. In the increasingly competitive event landscape, experiential events marketing offers an outstanding way to engage your leads and participants and excite them about what your company has to offer.
We will explore nine innovative ways to use experiential marketing at your events to enhance attendee engagement. Employing these strategies can help you take your event planning to the next level so your brand stands out against the backdrop of the competition.
The Importance of Experiential Events
Between digital media, ever-improving technology, and cultural shifts, customers now appreciate more than ever the chance to participate and interact with event activities actively. Building successful experiential events can help you branch out of the boring mold of talking at an audience while using PowerPoint slides and experience a number of brand benefits for your company. Let’s look more closely at some of the value experiential events can offer businesses like yours.
Building Brand Connections
First, experiential events will create common experiences among your attendees and between your brand and your attendees. These experiences, particularly when tied with excitement, joy, or anticipation, help build emotional connections. These ties lay the foundation for relationships between leads and your brand, which can drive more sales and loyalty.
Increasing Engagement
Stepping outside the bounds of lectures and seminars will automatically pull people into your event. Interactive experiences offer something different and exciting that will encourage people to look closely at you. Piquing people’s interest like this will boost your audience participation and encourage more people to explore your activity.
Driving Brand Loyalty
Finally, successful experiential events can build greater brand loyalty. As you create memorable, positive experiences, your leads can bond with your team representatives on a personal level. You can demonstrate how much your brand cares about their experiences and wants to solve their particular pain points. These uplifting associations can then encourage long-term brand loyalty that will encourage people to stay with your company and even promote your business to others.
Experiential Marketing Concepts to Explore
Now that you see the benefits of quality experiential marketing campaigns, let’s explore nine key concepts you can explore and consider incorporating into your brand promotion.
Concept 1: Immersive Brand Experiences
The first type of experience we will explore is the immersive brand experience. Let’s break down what this entails and what it might look like in a marketing campaign.
Definition and Examples
With immersive brand experiences, you create experiences that surround customers in a multisensory fashion. You want to transport them to an environment dominated by your core brand experience or message. These types of events often use visual aids, such as pictures, screens, and panels, to bring people to the new environment. Lighting can also go a long way in creating a more immersive experience.
To see this type of experience done well, consider the Microsoft Ignite campaigns. With immersive VR, Microsoft used technology to transport people to an entirely new environment where they could experience different products and services in action.
Similarly, Lululemon Sweatlife also created an immersive experience by designing event activities that engaged the entire body through yoga and wellness workshops, offering people the chance to build connections and learn while exercising. This spoke to their target audience and immersed people in the Lululemon brand mission so they could experience it with their whole body.
Implementation Tips
Those who want to create immersive experiences should focus on a few main steps in creating successful experiences.
- Think about your brand mission and how it overlaps with particular experiences. For example, do you want to take people on a culinary journey, allow them to experience a futuristic society with your technology, or build an active wellness lifestyle?
- Consider your target audience and the types of experiences they would appreciate. Experiential marketing cannot target everyone, you have to think about your core brand audience who will appreciate these experiences and what they specifically want to see or do.
- Once you have a particular event you want to create, look at the event from all angles. Consider what people in that environment should experience with their five senses and how you can creatively implement that experience.
Concept 2: Interactive Workshops
Another popular form of experiential marketing comes from interactive workshops. These types of experiences offer audience members hands-on experiences that they appreciate.
Engaging Your Audience
With a well-constructed workshop, you encourage people to participate in your brand values and learn material they appreciate. Workshops can take various formats and themes, from opportunities to learn and engage directly with your product or service to interacting with your brand more tangentially—such as an art gallery offering an art lesson.
Let’s explore ways businesses can create interactive workshops their leads and event attendees will enjoy.
Successful Workshop Experiential Event Ideas
Workshops can take a variety of different formats. Some of the most popular options include:
- Opportunities to learn more from your products and services. This works well for events where many attendees are existing customers. You can provide workshops to preview new features you will soon release, demonstrate advanced capabilities, earn new product certifications, and more.
- Opportunities to experience your products and services. If you have many attendees who have not used your brand products before, you might hold workshops where people can try out your offerings.
- Workshops to experience something new related to your field. If your industry has seen some recent shifts or advancements, you might hold workshops to give people the chance to experience these new advancements to see how these abilities might apply to their own lives.
- The chance to try their hand at something you offer. People enjoy experimenting with what they see the experts do. If you run an art-related business, you might offer people a painting class. If you run a restaurant or a catering business, your event might include a cooking workshop. As a bonus, this type of workshop can help increase the appreciation people have for professionals in your field.
Concept 3: Pop-Up Experiences
The next concept on our list is pop-up experiences. These events involve setting up a quick event area that gives people the chance to experience something new for a limited time.
The Power of Exclusivity
Since your event in our pop-up tent will only last a short time, you introduce the power of exclusivity. People have a fear of missing out on something interesting or fun. Since they know your event will only last a short time, it will boost your popularity and encourage people to come check out your event.
Planning Your Pop-Up Event
To create a short-lived, exclusive event, you will want to focus on a few main factors.
Your first priority will be the environment where you set up for the event. You want to think about the type of event that will bring you your target audience and build excitement for your short-lived opportunity. For many businesses, this is an industry event or a festival-type atmosphere, which will help you attract a wide audience.
Secondly, proper execution depends on capitalizing on something unique that people will appreciate. Consider current trends and fads within your industry. Brainstorm ideas that will offer long-lasting value for your audience.
Finally, promote this event with an emphasis on its short-lived nature. Build excitement through countdowns, highlight the expiration of this event, and let people know the value they will experience when they take advantage of this exclusive opportunity.
Concept 4: Sensory Experiences
The next type of event you can create is a sensory experience. These events create enjoyable experiences by tapping into your senses on a deep level to build memories and create positive associations.
Engaging the Senses
Engaging the senses can help people remember your campaign and feel fully engaged with what you have created. Consider the warm and relaxed feelings people often have when they walk into a coffee shop; this is an example of an excellent sensory experience. When you trigger people’s senses like this, you can help to elicit similar emotional reactions and memories.
Innovative Sensory Ideas
There are a variety of strategies you can use to activate people’s senses. Consider:
- Music or natural sound recording for hearing.
- Fresh food or drinks with sample options for taste
- Tactile experiences, ranging from spa experiences to comfortable, enveloping seating.
- Pleasant aromas, such as with calming essential oils or those associated with your products, for smell.
- Art, lighting, and decor for sight.
Concept 5: Gamification
Gamification has become a popular technique in the business world across various operations. You might use it to motivate employees, educate people in training, or otherwise keep them engaged. You can also use it during your events to keep people interested.
Making Events Interactive
With gamification, you draw people in to engage in a fun, interesting way. This will quickly boost engagement, as people feel drawn to learn more about your game and what they can gain. Games allow people to break out from the traditionally dry business atmosphere, boosting your attendance.
Examples of Gamification in Events
You have infinite possibilities when it comes to creating gamified experiences. Some popular choices include:
- Leaderboards for participation
- Scavenger hunts, which can be used for virtual or in-person events
- Raffles and giveaways
- Interactive games like trivia or puzzles
- Prediction games
- Early check-in giveaways
- Social media and hashtag challenges
Concept 6: Live Demonstrations
Live demonstrations can also appeal to your audience members and create appealing experiential marketing campaigns.
Show, Don’t Just Tell
Demonstrating key, valuable product features is the key to building a successful demonstration. As you create the event, you want to show, not tell. Don’t just tell people what they can do with your product or service, design a demonstration that lets them see the power for themselves.
Tips for Successful Demos
A successful demo event will come down to following a few best practices.
- Know the space well. Consider how much room you have during the event and how much you want to use for the event. Plan the flow of events, so people can see everything clearly.
- Promote the demonstration prior to and during the event. Build excitement around it.
- Think carefully about who on your team will conduct the demo. You want team members who can engage audiences well, answer questions, troubleshoot on the spot, and clearly show your product’s value.
- Tie the demonstration with an engaging strategy for drawing people in. Let people transition easily from the demo to speaking with your sales team and getting personalized consultations.
Concept 7: Social Media Integration
Social media is a powerful tool for engaging modern audiences and creating enticing experiences.
Amplifying You Event
Social media integration can help your event reach more people both through live-streaming and pre-event promotions. Social media has made the world significantly smaller, with large percentages of people having near-constant access to their mobile devices as well as their social accounts, so this integration helps you tap into that potential.
Creative Social Media Actions
Social media platforms offer far-reaching opportunities to connect with users. Here are some strategies to get you started:
- Build anticipation for your planned experience on social media with sneak peeks. Let people see parts of what you’re planning to whet their appetites.
- Use live-streaming. Live-streaming lets you bring your experience to countless people who cannot attend in person.
- Choose and use a hashtag. Make it easy for those who participated in the experience to connect with hashtags. This also helps you as you continue to engage with your audience.
- Consider influencers. Social media influencers can bring in their own followings and amplify your efforts.
Concept 8: Collaborative Art Projects
People often appreciate various forms of art and enjoy opportunities to incorporate it into their lives. Your experiential marketing can tap into this desire.
Creating Collective Experiences
Collaborative art projects, such as creating murals or people trying their hand at a particular art style, can all help foster community. People feel as though they worked towards something together and feel relationships with fellow participants.
Implementation Ideas
People can interact with art in various ways. For example, a traveling Van Gogh exhibit immerses people in the artist’s work, bringing the art to life in a unique way.
Other art experiences might be the chance to create art personally by offering a workshop or contributing to a mural celebrating a particular achievement.
Concept 9: Personalization
Remember the value of providing a high degree of personalization through all your experiential marketing efforts. This will boost people’s interest and engagement.
Tailoring the Experience
Successful experiential marketing can lay the foundation for relationships between brands and buyers, but personalization can take that a step further. Helping people feel you care about their experience can build engagement and interest.
Techniques for Implementing Personalization
To incorporate personalization into your experiential marketing strategies, you can use a few techniques. Consider the following:
- Collect data on attendees to learn about their backgrounds and roles within their companies. The better you can build a target persona, the easier it is to create effective experiences.
- As people check into the event, track those most likely to be interested in your particular experience. You can create personalized materials or workstations for them.
- Provide people with the chance to personalize materials themselves. Some events, such as Downey at the 2024 U.S. Open, allowed people to personalized the towels they received, which makes the event more memorable.
Conclusion
Building experiential marketing campaigns can help you better engage your target audience and create a highly effective means of inviting them to become more involved with your brand. To build these types of experiences, consider these different concepts to see which ones fit best with your brand and your internal organizational goals.
See what experiential marketing can offer you.
