Posts Tagged ‘Digital Marketing’

The Myths and Realities of Experiential Marketing

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014

Blog ImageThere’s no escaping it. ‘Experiential marketing’ has lately emerged as one of the new buzzwords in business, but one needs to analyze how it can be used for their brands? Seeing the brands and the rise of experiential marketing, it is very important for brands nowadays to cut through the noise when consumers are being bombarded with messages and information through a multitude of media channels. With that in mind, one has to ensure and start thinking about how they can get people to experience and talk about their offerings. One has to offer experiences that lead them to communicate; share and advocate your brand to others, who in turn can get interested in your brand.

The consumers of today are more inquisitive and interested. They know what’s happening around them. Experiential marketing by brands, here, can play a great role in engaging with the consumers. Hence, it is growing at a great pace and its significance & benefits are not unknown. While in the process to bring brands to life through experiential marketing, brand managers need to be clear about a few myths enveloping this communication channel!

Here are a few ‘Myths’ which in the process of moving ahead we tend to overlook:

Myth: Experiential is just an event

Experiential is all about creating brand experiences that are not only positive, but are based on high-quality marketing techniques, consumer behaviour and analysis. Though live events get people talking, it is more than just an event. It is more about the specific market that one is targeting. Hence, the essence of experiential is based on the experience that brands create for their specific target audience.

Myth: It’s expensive

Experiential marketing increases overall brand awareness and purchases. And a lot of people think that for an experiential marketing to be effective, it has to be costly. But, this is not the case as one needs to look at the return on investment to know its complete value. One needs to check out:

Increase in the overall sales
Number of attendees of the event or experience
Level of engagement achieved with the target market
Number of clicks and likes achieved. Basically, the overall digital traffic
Coverage of the event or experience (online, offline, TV and print)

Myth: It is only one channel of communication

Experiential marketing is all about creating a bond between the user and the brand by getting them engrossed in a fun & memorable experience. But the communication should not just be this, brand managers and experiential marketers need to come up with new ways to communicate with the consumers. Brands thus, need to create a two-way dialog with consumers to help them feel heard and authenticated. There should be enough flexibility added to your experiential events by combining it with digital, PR and other communication platforms.

Myth: It’s a trend

No, not at all! Experiential marketing is m\not a trend. One cannot avoid the way social media has evolved and how consumers have evolved with it too. Also, nowadays how consumers share their experiences across social networks cannot be ignored. Hence, brands have taken a step to capitalize on this by making experiential marketing an essential part of their brand strategy & mix. In the end, it completely depends on the brand and what message it wants to give out and how!

Myth: They say, anyone can be an experiential marketer

This is not the case because experiential efforts can fail badly if not set in motion with proper planning and at the right time. As known, there are various channels of communication that are used to communicate to consumers, so deciding on which channels to be used very much depends on the industry it is being used for and the target audience. Planning this properly comes from the one who is an expert in the use of experiential marketing. So, anyone can be an experiential marketer is a myth!

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141113013258-11474854-top-5-experiential-myths-bustedimage

Finally, when you design an experiential marketing program for your consumers, make sure it is well integrated with other communication channels, encourages and enhances consumer engagement. Ensure realistic parameters are set that protect brand’s identity across and take care to keep in mind the myths attached with experiential marketing for complete success and long term benefits. Lastly, don’t forget to ‘Have Fun’! Do share your thought with us in the comments below.

Branding & Marketing: The Online-Offline Blend!

Tuesday, August 5th, 2014

Blog ImageIn this constantly changing world of marketing, advertising and branding, a very simple Google search has the potential to reveal all trends that the industry can experience in times ahead. Few trends are already in the process of shaping up the route of marketing & branding and few are emerging gradually. The first quarter of this year has already witnessed few of the major developments in the social and digital landscape; one of these innovations being; the fusion of online and offline techniques. The time is here when businesses are striving to create an integrated marketing strategy because of the rising association between the corporeal and virtual worlds.

Digital Marketing is the leading edge, and everybody knows that. Therefore, with digital marketing or simply calling online marketing, it has become very easy for brands, brand managers and marketers to connect with their target audiences.

Now the question is, do you think this is just enough? The answer is, ‘No’!bi

Simply because, by just having an online marketing campaign does not mean one can leave offline marketing aside. What one should not do is, having two stand-alone marketing strategies and actually work towards having both the offline and online strategies work in synchronization.

Moving on, this type of marketing blend requires more than just integrating the marketing techniques. It requires integrating the mindsets of the marketers as this online and offline fusion is just like the two sides of the same coin. Consumers and audiences today are already living in this reality.

just think about it, how we print our movie tickets after booking it online, we research things online and pick it up from the related store, we buy something in the store and get information about it online. Still, marketers are not able to make out much on how and when to integrate both the channels.

If you are still wondering on how to begin with bringing your online and offline strategies together, below are a few things you can start with:

– Using Social Media platforms to spread the word about some brand event offline

– Adding a QR Code to a direct mail will lead to users visiting your website, subscribe to your other channels and interact with your brand on social media channels

– Encouraging offline decisions with SEO can provide valuable information about the target audience. Once the keywords that customers are using are understood, what inspires them to buy the product or brand can be defined and further, offline & online strategies can be planned around that

Integrating Offline and Online Marketing into your branding strategies can very much empower your Business. Let us see how:

imageHaving a great user base on social media channels and a considerable amount of traffic is not enough nowadays. As it has now become important to personalize the social media output unique to the brand. This not only helps in distinguishing the brand in the industry but in also evolving as a thought leader. Therefore, it becomes essential to select social media mediums that offer the best access to the target market, while also inculcating the character emotion into the content as a way of engaging an audience in conversation.

Keeping the brand’s identity alive across all channels is very important. The brand thought needs to be carried across business. So, while integrating the online and offline, one must ensure spreading the brand awareness. One must ensure that a fluid and cohesive brand is established across all outbound materials and publications. A cohesive approach needs to be adopted while marketing any venture.

Marketers and brand managers this year have seen, implemented and come to a conclusion that one of the best ways to market a brand is through an interactive campaign; a campaign that engages consumers through both corporeal and virtual marketing. While technology, social media platforms and mobile media might be used for organizing and facilitating an innovative idea or event, it will also need people to interact with it physically.

Online strategies like: Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Mobile Advertising and Social Media Marketing and Offline strategies like: Corporate Gifts and Promotional Products, Mainstream Media, Business Cards followed by Networking with members of the community are few such techniques to start with and help your brand excel with this fusion!

As they say, with great popularity come great challenges, how do you plan to fuse your next marketing strategies between the offline and online so that the consumer experience is not only good, but an extremely relevant one? How do you think one can leverage their knowledge about each prospect on one channel to turn them into a better customer on the other? Finally, how do you think it can be measured, analyzed and improved? Do share your thoughts with us!

Experiential Marketing – Significance & Benefits!

Monday, July 21st, 2014

Blog ImageIn the last blog we threw light upon how Brands & the Rise of Experiential Marketing can lead to a greater and personalized brand awareness and engagement, leading to a much stronger brand loyalty. Experiential marketing, thus, leads to offering positive experiences to people about a product or brand, which of course they find more interesting and memorable than an advertisement that simply says, ‘buy this!’ There lies a huge difference between making noise and making a lasting impact. A brand cannot be there to be just there, it needs to offer the coolest of experiences to its customers. Thus, such impressive experience bring with them great benefits too!

The simple rule of psychology says that we learn from our experience, and hence, the same rule also applies to marketing. The brand experiences that we go through help us form perceptions about the brand, trust and in turn become loyal customers. Experience does matter!

This is where experiential marketing plays the most important role as it triggers emotions, motivation and stimulates the neural region that makes decisions.

Benefits? They are many. By implementing an experiential marketing strategy you invite great benefits. It helps you,image

  • · Create awareness, builds brand image
  • · Display attributes
  • · Gain credibility
  • · Encourage purchase behaviour
  • · Appeals to consumer sense & develops emotional connection
  • · Build positive perceptions about the brand
  • · Builds customer brand loyalty
  • · Makes the brand stand out compared to the competition

So, when you plan to implement this in your marketing plan, do ask yourself; is my brand fun, exciting, thrilling etc.? What kind of chord do I want to strike into the minds of my consumers? What impact will it have and what will it make them feel? Will they ever use my band?

You must be wondering still, what is the importance of experiential marketing?

Consumers face unique experiences and varied choices which link them directly to the brand. Marketers are ready to invest in innovative technologies, so experiential is the trend. Face to face interaction strengthens the relationships with target audiences. Rising competition in the industry gives way for brands to be more innovative in their marketing approach. Lastly, brand image & customer loyalty essentially convert into sales and experiential marketing does provide measurable results and return on investment (ROI).

Too add to your thinking process and for some instant motivation, here’s a collection of some of the best experiential marketing efforts by top brand across the globe.

MERCEDES-BENZ – “Looks fast. Even in park.”

image

TROPICANA – “Brighter mornings for brighter days”

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC – Augmented Reality

SPANAIR – “Unexpected luggage”

GRANATA PET STORE – “Snack Check”

COCA-COLA – “The Coca-Cola friendship machine”

HARPER COLLINS – “This dark endeavor”

BAR AURORA & BOTECO FERRAZ – “Drunk Valet”

VOLKSWAGEN – “The fun theory”

You would also love to watch these amazing creative works too:

Carlsberg: Happy Beer Time Installation
Scrabble Wi-Fi: Play for Free Wi-Fi Minutes!
Kit Kat: Free No-WiFi Zone
Source: www.digitalbuzzblog.com, morethanbranding

These are indeed some of the great experiences to remember. Do you know or wish to share more such innovations? Have you tried to integrate the element of digital experiential marketing for your brand yet? Do share your thoughts and experiences with us in the comments below!

Brands & the Rise of Experiential Marketing

Thursday, July 3rd, 2014

Blog imageDid you step out of the house lately and bump into some interactive installation by some brand? Well, if so, then this can be nearly called as experiential marketing as this is that type of messaging which you can touch, view or feel in a physical space. Yes, it indeed is on the rise, and marketers of all types of brands and products are trying their best to connect with their consumers in person and also digitally through Tweets, YouTube videos, Instagram etc. Marketers and brand managers seem to have shifted their prime focus on building consumer experiences through their marketing efforts. They are encouraging consumers to share their personal experiences with the brand during certain activities, concerts, speaking sessions, followed by their overall brand experiences.

Engaging with audiences beyond physical experiences is what the marketers of this era are looking at. Therefore, they are, through their experiential marketing efforts, targeting, attracting and leveraging as many consumers as possible.

But then, what a brand does to build excitement, drive eagerness and generate traffic reflects in the experience it gives to its audience in the digital space.

Nowadays, what brands do matters a lot more than what they say. Don’t you agree on that?

biWe now live in the digital age where we have an immense number of virtual communities, not ignoring the fact that brands do rely on social media for interacting and engaging with their consumers. But with the need of the hour being breaking through the online marketing clutter, brands need to think beyond the social landscape. They now need to create an online-offline connect by providing with memorable experiences to their consumers.

If thoughtfully planned and strategically executed, experiential marketing has a great potential to improve brand performance and value by producing exciting experiences for consumers leading them to share it on social platforms.

So, in order to amplify your brand’s online presence and create a digital impact with experiential marketing make sure your digital strategy ensures these points:

Interaction

Do ensure that the quality of the interaction you do with your consumers is not compromised because an experience has a far greater impact as it motivates people to take action. If the interaction is good, then they build relationship with the brand further sharing it online.

Building Relationships

Experiential marketing not just delivers greater responses or impressions, but leads to building deeper relationships with consumers making them feel the connection with the brands. This relationship building mechanism leads to establishing brand advocacy for the brand through online and word of mouth communication.

Breaking the clutter

As the clutter factor is increasing in the digital marketplace, a lot of consumers are becoming resistant to this clutter and are not ready to take this flood of messages. But with experiential marketing, consumers will not just see, but feel and remember your brand message for a very long time. So, brands can break the clutter by offering an experience to their consumers and increasing awareness for their brand.

Customers – Targeting the right ones!

Targeting the right consumers for experiential marketing is the key. As this marketing technique appeals to those ready to take risks and try out new things and learn too. The right consumer will experience the brand, understand its message and walk away with an intention to purchase or atleast share about it online.

majorlittlethings
Image Source: majorlittlethings.com

Well, there is no doubt about the impact that experiential marketing can have on consumers and their purchase behaviour. Brands that are ready to take up experiential marketing are sure to increase awareness, build loyalty and boost sales for their brand. What do you think about it? Have you tried to create this digital impact with your experiential marketing efforts? Do share your thoughts with us!