The Rise of Experiential Branding: Creating Memorable Customer Experiences
“Experiential branding” and “experiential marketing” are the most trending and powerful marketing trends in the industry, including in non-traditional media in India. They have been around for more than a century, but recent recognition and growth have encouraged brands to experiment with this trend of combining the ultimate customer experience and marketing together. The aim is to create something that is an immersive and interactive experience for consumers as well as for brands.
What is experiential branding?
Experiential branding is a type of branding strategy that looks after the overall branding and positioning of the company and its products and services while focusing on the experiences and interactions consumers are looking for. It is a customer service experience that helps brands differentiate from their competition by providing unique value to the brand.
What is experiential marketing?
Experiential marketing is the process of experience management through which brands can connect with consumers, create a live and interactive experience, and raise brand awareness and loyalty. The marketing goal is to enable memorable and emotional connections with the audience by connecting them with the products and services, forging lasting relationships, and most importantly, building brand loyalty.
Types of experiential marketing
There are various types of experiential marketing strategies that a marketer can use according to the brand’s goals and its target audience:
1. Brand Activation: It is basically a mini event for new product launches, so that the customers themselves can see the benefits of the products and also your brand and its identity.
2. Event Marketing: Events are a great platform for brands to engage and interact with the customers, building great client experience within a short period of time. For example, exhibitions, presentations, displays, concerts, etc.
3. Guerilla Marketing: It is an unconventional method of marketing involving elements of surprise, interactive emotions, risk and provocativeness. It is a great way to drive publicity and awareness for your brand.
4. In-house Experiences: Pop-up shops and in-store activities are the most popular and effective marketing techniques where brands provide unique customer experience journey with fun and limited-time-only offers, thus engaging at the highest level.
5. Immersive and Exclusive Experiences: By skipping the traditional methods and opting for product showcases and demos, you can offer the customers to experience the products in person. You can even combine the virtual reality (VR) technology and provide the customers an immersive experience.
Why do brands use experiential marketing and branding?
There are numerous reasons for a brand to use experiential marketing, which include raising brand awareness and increasing loyalty, building long-lasting relationships and memories, stimulating positive and effective word-of-mouth publicity, encouraging interaction and customer service experiences, and most importantly, increasing the return-on-investment, lead generation, and sales.
How brands can leverage experiential branding and marketing to create memorable customer experiences
1. Define your target audience: You should define your target audience based on their preferences, needs, interests, and purchasing habits. This way, brands can influence the consumer's decision journey and engage and interact with them.
2. Define your brand goals: Your brand should first define its goal and then create a compelling and concise brand message that perfectly aligns with it.
3. Create creative and engaging campaign: You should develop a creative, engaging and interactive campaign that encourages more customers to participate in. This will provide value to the brands if you are educating something through your campaign and providing something beneficial to the customers.
4. Market your campaign across multiple platforms: You can market your campaign effectively by endorsing it across multiple platforms. Make sure to use channels preferred by the target audience like social media.
5. Leverage Virtual and Augmented Reality: You can incorporate Augmented and Virtual Reality into your marketing strategy for providing a seamless experience to your audience. This way customers can publicize your products and services, thus attracting and attaining even more customers.
Final Thoughts About Experiential Branding And Customer Experience:
With the current changing trends, experiential marketing is also becoming digital. People are spending more time online, and the digital customer experience will become more important than ever, thus giving more opportunities for brands to connect with customers.
Every successful marketing strategy is built on connections and experience, and if you need help planning and executing a creative and effective experiential marketing campaign, head to a The best non-traditional agency like Excellent Publicity.
From planning to execution and measuring your campaign, the agency will help you curate the best and most effective marketing campaign that can help your brand raise awareness and customer loyalty.