Experiential marketing goes way beyond extolling the virtues of a product. Brand managers seek to create a tangible experience that allows a consumer to make up their own mind without being fed carefully crafted marketing messages. The way a product or service is presented in a creative way to engage customers without demanding anything in return, is key to a successful experiential campaign. In today’s world where the consumer is spoilt for choice and is bombarded with information from innumerable channels, experiential marketing breaks the clutter and humanises the brand, something that every consumer is looking for. Here’s examining three things to remember for a successful experiential campaign.



Perfect avenue for product trials: In today’s economic climate, consumers place increasing importance on brands that offer avenues to trust them. Experiential marketing offers the closest interaction with consumers. The most important takeaway out of an experiential exercise is recall. Most brands treat this as the perfect platform to introduce product trials. Experiential marketing also scores highly in encouraging more purchases from existing customers, attracting lapsed customers and inspiring repeat purchases. Using this, brands stay ahead of competition. This is the perfect way for both – high end luxury cosmetics as well as lower price point FMCG products, both of which require a fair amount of decision making before the first purchase. In fact, these two segments also develop a high degree of consumer loyalty once the product is accepted by the consumer.



Create spontaneous brand ambassadors via engagement: As per experts, experiential marketing increases overall and spontaneous brand awareness, purchases and recommendations by more than 50 per cent. So, if brands are assessing the effectiveness of their marketing channels, then they should be considering experiential as an important part of their marketing mix.



The key to making this successful is by creating innovative engagement scenarios offline, much in tune with the brand philosophy and experience. For instance, Oreo’s Dunkathon, or PUMA’s Social Club are examples of the same.



Stay away from logo marketing: Experiential is such a popular term these days. Brands ask for it, and everyone is claiming to be an expert in it. There is a thin line between promoting the experience and promoting the brand associated with it. To gain a loyal consumer, brands need to concentrate more on selling the experience. Creating memorable experiences helps strike a chord with consumers. Coke’s Open Happiness campaign and Mahindra’s Monastery Escape are examples of brands displaying their philosophy than mere promotion of their products.