What do people love most? Is it a happy ending? Is it the journey? Do they want some more fun in life or a memorable experience even if it has the pangs of reality? These are a few questions almost all leading advertising gurus have been asking their audiences for a couple of years now.
If you look at the awareness campaigns by leading experiential marketing agencies in New York, you will notice a common element among them all – a hard-hitting reality that drives the message home. Whether it is Climate Change awareness campaign by Nat Geo or the diversity campaigns by Coca Cola; all successful campaigns touch human emotions.
What is shareability?
Every marketer knows the value of a good story. However, people have visibly shifted away from traditional marketing campaigns, including print and digital over the years. They want to be a part of the story and experience it first-hand.
Today, it is all about shareability. The audience not only wants to establish a genuine relationship with a brand, but they also want to share their exclusive experience on social media.
Exclusivity has always been a significant part of experiential campaigns. However, it is not enough to offer one paying customer an exclusive experience. Brands need to keep their experiences shareable via social media and personal messaging platforms.
How to keep customer experience shareable on social media?
Here’s why you need to consider how your campaign will look on social media – close to 50% of all attendees at events share posts from the location and live videos via Instagram, SnapChat and WhatsApp with their friends and peers. Brands are responsible for creating remarkable experiences, and the people are responsible for sharing it. However, maintaining the subtle touch of shareability is also the responsibility of the brand marketing managers, and many often overlook this tiny detail.
1. Create enough visual elements
User-generated content might be the key to drive up your sales and profit figures this season. Over 93% of customers find it helpful and reliable before making a purchasing decision.
User-generated content can consist of reviews of an event, blogs from the event-spot, or even live videos and Instagram posts. It is up to the brand to create enough visual content on-spot to urge the attendees to share their views.
It is one of the few factors that drove the #ImNotABox social campaign by Zappos to the pinnacle of success. Whether you are spearheading a social media sharing contest or an event-based campaign, remember to conduct thorough research into the likes and dislikes of the customer.
You can incentivize the re-gramming, video reviewing, and photo/video contests for your customers to accelerate branded content and your visibility on the web.
2. Don’t expect the audience to find you
Always go where you can find your audience. Brands can be stationary when it comes to experiential marketing. While disruption is a core tenet of experiential marketing, you should do everything you can to avoid disrupting your consumers.
That means geo-locating your target demographics and taking the events to them. It not only ensures the highest possible attendance, but it also facilitates smooth voluntary engagement from the consumer base.
One of the most successful campaigns to use this idea was Google's Impact Campaign. It showed marketers how something small could make a significant impact when marketers are ready to take the campaign to the physical location of their consumers.
3. Find partners in your journey
By partners, we don't just mean the best experiential agency in New York, but also other non-competing brands with similar goals. It includes partnering with local music festivals, movie theaters, retail units, and restaurants to offer the consumers a branded experience.
The contingency plan should benefit all partners involved since they target overlapping consumer bases. Co-branding experiences are becoming popular across New York, and we have already seen how much fame it can drive when the right brands find each other – Google and Zappos partnered up with the “cupcake sabotage” stance benefiting both companies in terms of visibility and brand image.
4. Start whispers on social media
If you want to cement your brand on social media platforms, you will need more than accurate planning of a ground-based event. You will need pre-promotional posts along with intriguing images and behind-the-scenes videos that tease the target consumers.
Remember to release them as per the schedule and make them available to all your consumers across NY. Without pre-promotions, it is challenging to boost the attendance to solo events, even when you bring the show to the customers.
Experiential marketing is a mix of multiple elements from traditional print and digital campaigns. It picks out the best aspects that boost brand image and visibility and packages it in an easy-to-share but an exclusive experience. Hence picking the right experiential marketing agency can help you devise the perfectly balanced plan for your upcoming branding or activation campaign.
