How to Make Emotional Connections with Experiential Marketing

Intro

With the average person exposed to thousands of advertisements every day, it’s difficult to imagine a world without ads.

Bombarded with them all day, every day, it's unsurprising that we've developed varying levels of "ad blindness." Believe it or not, banner blindness, where web users consciously or unconsciously ignore banner-like information, is now a phenomenon. So, how can marketers and businesses avoid their marketing efforts being drowned out?

From traditional PR campaigns to social media and SEO, today’s marketers, advertisers, and businesses have a variety of creative mediums at their fingertips to reach out and connect with their audiences.

However, thanks to the sheer number of eCommerce brands out there, social media and SEO marketing alone simply won't cut it anymore. Alongside the increasing use of ad blocker apps, consumers are pledging their loyalty to brands they can create an emotional connection with.

That’s why savvy marketers are now using experiential marketing to stand out from the crowd and create solid connections with their customers.

What is Experiential Marketing?

In the last five years or so, travel and experiences have surged in popularity, rapidly overtaking traditional material gifts. Why? Because they don’t clutter up your home, you have long-lasting memories of the experience, and it's personalized to your specific interests.

The same principles can be attributed to experiential marketing. It doesn’t clutter up your inbox or social media feed with spammy campaigns nor is it sure to be deleted and forgotten in a matter of moments. Also known as XM, engagement marketing, and live marketing, it creates memorable interactions and invigorates customer loyalty.

Experiential marketing has revolutionized the way customers connect with brands, lead generation, and business growth in much the same way that contact centre speech analytics has transformed customer communication.

By offering a fun and unique experience, experiential marketing is a proven advertising technique that’s being used to build unbreakable bonds between forward-thinking brands and buyers.

(Image sourced from agencyea.com)

The latest 2023 State of Experiential Research study findings certainly provide food for thought. Notable takeaways include:

• 74% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers plan to include a virtual component for their next live experience.
• 64% of B2B marketers and 40% of B2C marketers anticipate their budget will increase within the next year by 5-10%.
• 89% agreed that capturing and leveraging event data has made a positive impact on their marketing strategy.

What Are Some Experiential Marketing Examples?

Forget influencer marketing and conventional event marketing—they’re not the same thing. Experiential marketing is all about engagement, interaction, and the overall experience.

To create valuable brand awareness and a priceless rapport with your audience, here are some examples of experiential marketing to strengthen your strategy.

Type of experiential marketing	Example of experiential marketing
Product demos	Free product samples
Interactive activities at trade shows	An immersive virtual reality game with a custom-branded experience
Local social community gatherings	A fundraiser for a worthy cause
'Behind the scenes' virtual events	An exclusive live stream that allows attendees to interact with experts and ask questions
Planned publicity stunts	Breaking a world record associated with the brand
Guerilla marketing	A flash mob
AI technology	A virtual receptionist service

Let’s look at that last example in a little more detail. From personalized products and services to algorithms that analyze customer behavior and preferences, AI can be used to create meaningful emotional connections with your customers. It’s worth investigating the top marketing automation trends of 2023 for more valuable insights and inspiration.

What Are the Benefits of Experiential Marketing?

There are many benefits to implementing a proactive experiential marketing strategy, which explains why it’s been taking the world of business by storm. These include:

• Unmatched brand awareness
• Comfortable and non-intrusive to consumers
• Plants the seed for positive brand image
• Effectively allows customers to "try before they buy"
• Provides valuable, real-time feedback
• Broadens word-of-mouth marketing efforts
• Pairs well with multiple marketing strategies
• Nurtures brand loyalty
• Engages the senses to make a lasting impression
• Allows for two-way conversations
• Generates leads and increases sales

(Image sourced from visme.co)

What Are the 11 Pillars of Experiential Marketing?

If you're wondering how to build emotional connections with consumers, concentrating on the experience of your audience is the best place to start. No matter whether your campaign is heartwarming or funny, appealing to their emotions will make your brand appear more relatable and trustworthy than your competitors.

The greatest experiential marketing campaigns all incorporate the following elements. So, to be successful, your attempt must be:

1. Remarkable. Let your personality and the story behind your brand shine through. Come into your own by personalizing your brand's unique selling points.
2. Engaging. Make sure you cover all types of technology to successfully engage with everyone. Do this by leading with charming content, not products.
3. Shareable. Ensure your campaign is easy to share across multiple channels. With billions of social media users worldwide, the top trending platforms for sharing content are YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat.
4. Authentic. Be open and honest—consumers hate fakes! Keep your company's mission and core values at its heart and always follow through on your promises.
5. Consistent. Carefully invest in the right domain purchase, logo, and branding, and always proofread content before publishing it. Using marketing calendars, setting brand guidelines, and repurposing content are all effective ways to keep your offerings consistent.
6. Flexible. Not everything will go to plan, so be open to adapting along the way. Allocating a portion of your marketing budget for ad-hoc changes is a good place to start.
7. Personable. Being friendly and kind and remaining calm at all times will boost emotional connections with your audience. As the saying goes, “Keep calm and carry on”.
8. Relatable. Take the time to get to know your following. By doing so, you’ll gain valuable insight into your target audience and the experience they're searching for.
9. Responsive. No matter whether it's good or bad feedback, it's important to respond to all interactions promptly. Anything longer than a business day can show you in a bad light. After all, nobody likes being ignored!
10. SMART. Set your experiential marketing strategy goals in line with the SMART acronym: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Setting SMART goals will help clarify your intentions and streamline the process.
11. Targetable. Identify your target market and segment your products and services to accommodate specific groups. Research and collate basic data such as their age, interests, and any challenges they're experiencing. The more you know, the more you can tailor your offerings.

TIP: To stay up-to-date with everything going on, a visual voicemail app can be advantageous. This allows you to quickly scan your voicemails at a glance, so you can prioritize the most important messages and not have to play them back to re-check information.

Above all else and for maximum impact, your experiential marketing campaign must provide value and bring something useful to the table.

How Do You Build Emotional Connections with Consumers?

Successfully increasing sales, leads, and awareness, experiential marketing has become the 'go-to' for farsighted marketers and businesses to build on their brand’s reputation and credibility.

To help you emotionally connect with both existing and potential customers, there are various approaches you can use. These include:

Sharing brand stories on social media

✅ Authentic ✅ Relatable ✅ Shareable

Done right, storytelling is a powerful tool that can enhance brand loyalty and awareness. Animation videos are particularly good at grabbing an audience's attention. Don't forget, people are more likely to share videos than any other form of content.

Screenshot from Pawsome Paws Boutique on Instagram

Sharing video testimonials on your website

✅ Remarkable ✅ Relatable ✅ Shareable

Seeing and hearing the experiences of real people who trust in your brand via user-generated content will positively impact trust levels. Face-to-face marketing and in-person experiences like these are the perfect combination for encouraging UGC.

Be human

✅ Personable ✅ Engageable ✅ Targetable

Engaging in the conversation and offering your audience perks such as discounts will show the human side of your brand.

Be sympathetic

✅ Consistent ✅ Responsive ✅ Flexible

Iron out any issues your audience may have with your product or brand by talking to your customer base and conducting surveys.

Personalized promotional products and services

✅ Personable ✅ Targetable ✅ Shareable

From eco-friendly promotional products to shopping bags, this sort of merchandise offers a great way to create a lasting impression. Consider using innovative techniques such as Person Search to gather insights about your customers and tailor your promotional items to their specific preferences and interests.

Be truthful

✅ Authentic ✅ Consistent ✅ SMART

Ethical awareness is incredibly important to the consumers of today. So, being known as a brand that’s transparent and honest will build trust and stimulate business growth.

If you need guidance in implementing an effective experiential marketing strategy, you can consider seeking the expertise of marketing consulting firms. They can provide valuable insights, strategies, and support to ensure your experiential marketing efforts are impactful and aligned with your business goals.

Conclusion

Enhancing trust in your brand whilst boosting customer satisfaction levels, experiential marketing is firmly focused on the whole user experience from start to finish. The fact customers are more likely to be loyal to brands they have a positive emotional connection with cannot and should not be ignored.

Ensure your experiential marketing campaign is interactive and memorable at every touchpoint, and you’ll be well on your way to creating enduring emotional connections with your customers, which are sure to stand the test of time.