Why is Experiential Marketing so Powerful?
August 2023
There has been a huge rise in the number of brands focusing their efforts on experiential marketing. 77% of marketers now implement experiential marketing strategies, and according to Hubspot, it is one of the top 5 marketing strategies. So why is experiential marketing such a powerful tool?
What is Experiential Marketing?
Experiential marketing is an immersive, interactive media that allows a brand to build a deep connection with audiences. By engaging consumers in real-life experiences, brands leverage lasting emotional connections and brand loyalty. Live experiences write a story that delivers a sensorial experience – engaging sight, sound, smell and taste. It is by captivating emotions, allowing audiences to directly communicate with a brand whilst in the moment, and building a long lasting memory of this experience that this media is an extremely powerful form of marketing.
Why is Experiential Marketing So Powerful?
As lockdown restrictions eased, a profound yearning for genuine human interaction surged within the average consumer, driven by our profound reliance on technology during the pandemic. This newfound openness extends to seeking and embracing novel initiatives offered by brands in audience’s every day lives.
A Shopify study has revealed that 3 out of 5 shoppers expect retailers to have more space dedicated to experiences. The Lego store is a perfect example of a physical place consumers can visit to actively experience the product, with space to play and create, as well as make a purchase.
New technology makes experiential marketing a powerful tool for collecting customer data. Scanning QR codes for competitions at events can give you real-time data. Providing an ‘Instagrammable’ backdrop and an incentive to share can generate a buzz around a specified hashtag.
By making your customers an active participant in your brand marketing, you are directly engaging them and creating an emotional connection. Research has shown that 71% of customers who have an emotional connection with a brand are more likely to remain brand loyal and recommend your brand to their friends.
This is where the power comes into play. Word of mouth remains one of the leading factors in a customer’s buying decision. Here are just a few reasons why:
- 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends.
- Word-of-mouth marketing brings in 5 times more sales than paid media.
- 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a critical influencer in their purchasing decision.
If you combine those powerful statistics with the fact that brands that use experiential marketing receive three times the word-of-mouth awareness of those that fail to do so, it becomes very clear why experiential marketing is so powerful.
A fun and engaging experiential campaign creates noise, which in turn reaches more customers and drives sales. An integrated approach to experiential marketing can be even more powerful. Creating a tangible offline experience and creating an online dialogue about it. 6 in 10 Gen Z shoppers are likely to share a positive sampling experience on social media. This authentic user-generated content is one of the most powerful forms of advertising a brand can get.
A Barbie World
To look at a real-world example of a successful experiential marketing campaign we need to immerse ourselves in pink and enter the Barbie world. When the Barbie movie was released it broke records on the first box office weekend. And it’s not hard to see why with the hugely powerful marketing campaign behind it.
Yes, there were the traditional billboards, but this was combined with various experiential marketing tactics which immersed the consumer into the brand and helped them feel a part of something:
- Listing a life-sized Barbie dream house in Malibu on Airbnb
- Barbie Selfie Generator on social media
- Human-sized Barbie boxes for photos at cinemas
- London Eye lit up pink for the UK premiere
All of these experiences created a buzz at the point of the experience and generated online content. You would have quite literally had to live under a rock to escape the noise of the Barbie movie this Summer!
Conclusion
An effective brand experience can turn your customers into your brand ambassadors, making your most valuable asset your advertiser through the power of experiential marketing.
To sum up why experiential marketing is so powerful…
- It creates an emotional connection with the customer
- It boosts brand loyalty which in turn drives growth
- It drives word-of-mouth advertising and user-generated content
- It can provide brands with customer data and profiles
- It has a lower cost than traditional Marketing media
- Your customers become your brand ambassadors.
And if that doesn’t convince you that your brand should be utilising the power of experiential marketing, here is a final statistic:
91% of consumers think participating in experiential marketing would make them more inclined to buy from the brand.
Yes, you did read that right; 91%!
