Digital marketing strategies are no longer discrete from traditional marketing. There are hardly any tech-savvy brands today, which have not tried their hands at online marketing strategies. As a result, online marketing has become a super competitive area. All brands are looking for something newer and edgier to make their mark. That is precisely where experiential marketing makes its grand entrance. It ties social media marketing, pop-up marketing, site-based activations and digital wallscape together into one measurable package.
Experimentation can help you garner those extra views
Are you having a tough time imagining that? Let us make it easier for you by giving an example. M&M launched its caramel flavor in May 2017. The parent brand Mars kicked off a grand marketing campaign that featured an AR experience at Times Square. The brand transformed Times Square into a giant M&M’s ARcade and made it impossible for any passersby to miss their advertisement. That was a grandiose plan that resulted in more than 26,000 impressions in one day and the use of the hashtag #UnsquareCaramel over 2,200 times on Twitter. If these numbers do not sound impressive enough, wait till you hear their total social media reach! They reached about 6 million users across several channels. They triggered a chain reaction that generated over 466 million impressions.
Several brands are trying what M&M achieved in 2017, and experiential marketing agencies are making their dreams come true. Companies are looking for a social media marketing strategy that is seamlessly in coordination with their experimental marketing plan. Without a sound social media marketing strategy, the measurement of the KPIs for a brand can become a challenge. Quantifying the results of an experiential marketing effort has never been easy, but with the successful integration of necessary social elements to the plan, it becomes more probable. Check out Roots3 Productions to find out how you can optimize your KPIs.
What is a predominant challenge of experiential marketing?
Consumer interactions have always been about the emotional experiences. No brand has ever been able to create a lasting impression on their consumers without invoking real emotions. Over the years, brands like Coca-Cola, P&G, and Apple have leveraged the collective human emotions to expand their market. That is where the dilemma of hard metrics and soft metrics come in. It is likely because marketing is not a science and measuring every KPI is not always possible, even with more traditional strategies. The best performing brands often state that it is impossible to quantify 100% of the results, but it is essential to make an impression.
Is there a way to circumvent the quantification problem?
To justify the costs of experiential marketing, brands have tried, time and again, to switch from passive data measurement to active data measurement. It includes utilizing hashtag filtration tools, social listening tools, and geo-filters to check their mention and extent of popularity. The experiential niche is a relatively unexplored opportunity for almost all emerging brands as well as the market brands, willing to make their mark. Today, doing well in the marketing and advertising disciplines is not enough. A company must outperform their competitors regarding consumer interactions, reach, and impressions.