Experiential & Social - A Formidable Partnership

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Marketers can no longer deliver a one-way dialogue, customers demand meaningful conversations – that provides opportunities to engage, connect with brands of their choice.

The push is now on customer experiences, facilitating a sincere relationship between customer and brand across many interactions, in a world, the consumers are spoilt with a plethora of choices and information download, storytelling as a phenomenon, has empowered global brands. 

It has simultaneously encouraged lesser known brands /start-ups, to prepare marketing strategies that involve experiential marketing & social media. Call it a boon or compulsion, No marketer, irrespective of the brand size he/she represents, would ever contest that, the pull a brand extracts from experiential marketing & social media. Experiential Marketing not only helps companies/ products/ brands to connect but also facilitates a two- way interactive communication with their captive audience. Experiences disseminate accurate interactions, educate target groups, iterate brand messaging & measure feedbacks.

Social Media has emerged as a useful tool, to measure a consumer’s brand experience, iterate & engage with the target groups. Brand experiences are about the sustained impact and cultivating lasting loyalty rather than just grabbing customers’ attention for a moment. A spike in activity before, during and immediately after the event is nice, but do the people continue to engage with your business weeks or months later? Social media bridges those spheres & endures the message for a long time.

Driving word of mouth to experience, is important for brands, in an era where people talk about their choices more, and, more online. Brand events and activations are perfectly positioned to boost this organic form of experience marketing. It has the power to turn people into advocates, and advocacy is known to drive growth. Consumers influence each other’s decisions, as people use their alignment with brands to express their social identity. 

Social media adds fluidity to an experiential marketing campaign, amplifying & elevating customer experience, this not only enhances the longevity to the recall. Brands, increase word of mouth marketing by creating positive experiences at various touch-points such as events, promotions, Pos etc. thus, establishing good relationships with their customers while consistently delivering great products and services. 

Social Media and Experiential Marketing are driven by a few similar characteristics which are detailed as below: 

Tap your Target Audience : The prime advantage of using experiential marketing & Social Media is they facilitate to accurate targeting to the right demographics; While planning campaigns – Experiential marketing infuses the Target Group through various effective on-ground experiences, live events, promotions, incentives etc Social Media on the other hand uses its tools for precise targeting: Facebook, Twitter , Snapchat, Linked in use geo-targeting & intelligence to devise consumer’s browsing patterns, their choices, their lineages & their likes dislikes, It enables the push of ads/ content according to their profiles and their demographic areas. Thus, enables planners to devise campaigns which have the potential to pick-up and go viral.

Weigh your Message: Effective messaging with the right context is key to any successful campaign, be it for on-ground activation or social media, Create a copy that disseminates accurate messaging core to the product/brand objective, whereas, on social media use the right mix of hashtags to promote; use the right channel combinations, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube & Twitter influence the audience to achieve the campaign goals. Social campaigns are less expensive than other media mediums, reach more diverse samples, allows strategic targeting even in smallest demographic areas. These campaigns are agile, faster to implement, & runs multiple campaigns, pushes the right message to its customer, available across touch points. 

Measure Insights, Analyse & Improvise: Measuring a campaign, social media analyses tools to understand how effective an experiential marketing campaign was, through content and brand impressions, content engagements, likes, retweets, comment, ratings, etc. Improvisations to the plans, through insights gathered, are called customer feedbacks. Feedbacks are the accurate source of information, that stimulates, elevates or allow to course correct paths in-order to influence a positive brand recall, during or post the campaign. Improvising is the key to any campaign – as it clearly distinguishes between just a campaign or a successful campaign.

To recapitulate, social media acts as a catalyst in experiential marketing by toning down the financial hurdle for smaller brands but affirms as a pivotal channel to interact with consumers & vice versa, experiential marketing & social are the ideal & effective ways to connect with people. With a slew of smaller brands aspiring to join the big league, this confluence of experiential marketing & social media is here to stay, thus reap benefits.