What exactly is Experiential Marketing?

Before we get started, let's introduce the topic by covering some of the terminology:

• Marketing: coming from the noun /market/ + the present continuous /ing/, is the science of a continuous strategy of positioning a brand, product or service at the marketplace.
• Experiential: coming from the noun /experience/, is an adjective that describes the nature of something that has left an impression on someone.
• Experiential Marketing: we can define it as a strategy to position a brand, product or service at the marketplace by leaving an impression on someone, right?

Experiential Marketing does not have the major focus of selling a product or service, instead its goal is to make people interact and engage deeply with the brand creating a memorable experience in the customer’s brain indelibly.

This memorable experience not only increases brand engagement and retention but also ranks that brand as top-of-mind in that particular niche, which results in an easier future sale to happen due to the already-existing emotional relationship between the brand and the customer.

A successful experiential marketing strategy should fully immerse customers into the brand’s values, which can be done through different techniques. The following are five examples:

Experiential event marketing is a personalized themed brand experience to promote a brand, product or service with an in-person and real-time engagement. In order to be successful, it is important to have a well designed guest flow with memorable key touch points that guests will engage with from the beginning until the end of the event. Experiential events are all about creating an immersive branded bubble world that will get the audience motivated and excited, as well as make them interact and generate emotions towards the brand.

Note that nowadays experiential events can also be done as virtual experiences with the use of Web3, such as creating personalized themed meta-spaces (environments) in the metaverse.

Bringing technology into offline brand activations increases engagement and a new level of brand experience into the customers’ minds, but the best outcome from it is the users’ database that can be exported for future marketing purposes. Some examples of interactive brand activations can be adding a touchscreen with different kinds of digital content where users can tap, press and drag elements displayed in the panel; or even a custom-made brand game using a kinect camera or different tech for users to play and interact through movements.

Considered one of the most effective techniques for creating an unforgettable user experience, this tool works by using software to create a completely artificial and immersive environment through Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, 360 Degree Video and other emerging technologies.

It is a marketing technique which merges traditional model games with branding elements to attract, engage and retain customers. Most of the time, customers receive rewards by playing the game, which makes it more competitive and appealing to play. Depending on the game’s scope and storytelling, users can be immersed into the game and experience its brand's values.

Engaging with human senses is the best way for brands to leave a good and memorable experience. Successful offline experiential marketing should include at least three of the five human senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell) for a good sensory appeal.

When developing an experiential marketing strategy, it’s possible to mix several of the different techniques above into just one campaign, or even transform them into digital experiential campaigns using online methods to promote and engage consumers, thereby providing omnichannel campaigns. It’s important for an experiential marketing campaign to use both offline (PR campaigns) and online (digital campaigns) strategies. Experiential marketing tools are a massive game-changer that should be involved within any brand strategy, regardless of what sector or industry that a company is operating within.

As a personal opinion, the key for a memorable experiential marketing solution is to surprise the audience by giving them something that they are not expecting. Remember, make them experience your brand first and the purchase will come naturally afterwards!