Cracking the Code: Best practices in experiential marketing

Experiential marketing is set to be a major growth area in the next few years, as an increased proportion of marketing budgets is being shifted to this emerging form. Even though it is often perceived to be an independent channel, rather than a methodology; marketing communications budgets traditionally have not allocated specific portions to experiential marketing.

Experiential marketing initiatives by Indian firms hasalso grown tremendously over the last few years. There are two factors that this can be attributed to:
First, due to the overuse of traditional media and the need to do something different from the competition; brands which are largely functionally undifferentiated are trying to build an emotional attachment with consumers’ desires for novelty, individuality, and added value.
Second, there has been a proliferation of event marketing specialist agencies growing out of a number of related areas such as field marketing, event planning, brand management, public relations and advertising.

Experiential marketing has also expanded into experiential commerce now, which tries to replicate the complete shopping experience of a brick-and-mortar store. Technology has hitherto not transformed commerce as drastically as other industries. Commerce has enjoyed some innovation till now, but there is much more in store owing to the potential of experiential commerce, which will alter the way retailers sell and consumer buy, and blend online and offline experiences.

As experiential marketing continues to catch the fancy of marketers across sectors, and expand on various ways to use experiential marketing; the focus is to establish and standardize metrics for experiential ROI – which till now has been measured using similar metrics to traditional marketing and advertising – which are not suitable for measuring the success of a campaign. The challenge in experiential marketing is twofold:

1. Experiential ROI cuts across other marketing channels and therefore isolating the experiential bit is difficult for a marketer.
2. Experiential ROI is a Catch 22 situation. There is not much effort being put to standardize metrics and research for ROI because it is still an emerging field with a growing but albeit limited ad spend; and it is not getting enough confidence by marketers since there is a lack of proven ROI.

Common experiential marketing jargon

Experiential marketing – Experiential marketing is the process of identifying and satisfying customer needs and aspirations, profitably, engaging them through two-way communications that bring brand personalities to life and add value to the target audience.
Amplification – Live brand experiences do not typically reach as many target consumers as advertising does. The reach of the complete experiential marketing campaign however can exceed the reach of many adverts by incorporating amplification channels into the experiential marketing campaign. This can be achieved by integrating any of the marketing communications channels into the campaign to amplify the big idea, which is focused on two-way interaction in real-time: the live brand experience. Sometimes with a live brand experience that is exciting and newsworthy, free PR and media coverage can be generated, making it a cost-effective solution with broader reach.
Brand Loyalty – The ultimate goal of marketing, where there is the consumer’s commitment to consistent repurchasing of the brand.
Brand personality – A brand’s personality is characterized by human personalities. A company will establish a brand as having certain personality traits in order to market the brand to a specified target audience. Examples of a brand’s personality could be, for example, bold, youthful, funny and rebellious etc.
Brand-relevant experience – Creating an experience that is appropriate to the brand’s personality, values and target audience that will make it memorable to the consumer, facilitating brand loyalty and brand advocacy.
Face to face – Face to face means engaging the consumer in the same physical location that they are in via face-to-face communication. During a face-to-face live brand experience, the consumer can interact with the brand, its brand ambassadors, and the product, in order to physically participate in the live brand experience.
Interactive – A means of engagement between the target audience member and the brand, via a two-way interaction.

Need for defining best practices
Live marketing experiences are rarely done alone, and are typically integrated with rest of the marketing efforts utilizing a broad array of channels. Marketers go to several channels such as advertising, sales promotion, sponsorship, public relations, digital etc., where every channel has different goals and objectives. This multi – channel nature to experiential campaigns leads to complexity - therefore warranting a need to establish Best Practices that will help marketers and agencies highlight:
1. Customers they want to target
2. Various methods of interacting with these customers
3. Identification of location and environment
4. Integration with other marketing programmes

For this, we have devised a 6C’s index that will act as a checklist to all brands and agencies at the outset of an experiential programme:
1. Collaborative – opportunities with brand ambassadors and other attendees
2. Creativity – creative element, USP, breaking the clutter
3. Concentration – level of immersion of all senses
4. Concerted – memorability and high impact engagement
5. Customization – individuality and one-to-one opportunities
6. Constancy – genuine benefits and message provided to consumer

Summary
The beauty of experiential marketing lies in the fact that the creative process will lead to different results. Experiential marketing can be implemented across sectors, from technology to music, from BFSI to FMCG. There is no one sector (whether product or service) which is more or less appropriate for experiential marketing, since the inspiration for experiential marketing ideas comes from the brand personalities and the target audiences. The emotional connection that can be reached through brand-relevant experiences transcends the selling points of the product, its features and benefits.
To ensure the process is smooth right from identification of target audience to connecting with them, we propose a TRUE model:

Target Audience X
Reach
X
Ubiquity
X Emotional Connect

The total audience to which the firm wishes to communicate with
Number of people to whom the campaign reaches
Ability of firm to ensure the correct message goes to consumer with the right brand positioning
Measures how many consumers connect with the campaign

The debate also exists between outsourcing or using in-house resources. Our viewpoint is that it is advisable to employ people in-house for the customer experience management programme and to employ an experiential marketing agency for the live brand experiences.
The intent of defining best practices is not to curtail the creativity, but to act as a yardstick that guides marketers and agencies to stay true to the core objective of experiential marketing – to engage with customers and create customer delight. By identifying and mapping these “moments of truth,” marketers can guarantee a positive action from consumers. As organizations move from a service orientation to a customer experience orientation and eventually to a customer experience orientation, we will continue to see a growth in experiential marketing, and establishing best practices will help expedite the process and ensure it is a smooth transition.

(The story has been extracted from BW APPLAUSE)