From global experiential marketing campaigns, to intimate, exclusive affairs, experiential is everywhere. And we’re over the moon that everyone is suddenly catching on to the best marketing strategy around.
Besides allowing us to satisfy our insatiable creative cravings, the brand experience delivers an excellent and long-term Return on Investment. Here’s why brand experiences matter, and why they deserve the hype they’re getting.
You can create a cohesive brand image
Consumers are smart. They’re freethinkers. So hiding behind a computer screen telling them how great a brand is just isn’t going to cut it. Instead, you need to show them.
A brand’s reputation is defined by the positive and negative experiences of customers at every touch point. Which means that every single touchpoint matters.
Contrary to the old (and wise!) “don’t judge a book by its cover” phrase, your company is scrutinized from cover to cover everyday. It’s important to match a flawless real-life service with a brand’s online excellence to create a cohesive, positive image of a brand. If there’s a disconnect between the advertised message and the consumer’s actual experience, then it’s game over.
You’ll create a genuine customer-brand bond, that will greatly leverage your brand
We’re all driven by experiences – from great ones, to ones that still make us cringe to this day. We use experiences to help us determine our favourite people, restaurants, cities – and brands. In fact, consumers today value experiences over material possessions (and rightly so!).
By creating enriching, memorable consumer-brand interactions that your consumers can capture and share, you’ll nail the customer experience, and prove that you’re a brand that just gets it.
FYI, remember that every new positive interaction changes the way people think. It’s never too late to improve a brand experience!
And, you’ll garner great long-term ROI
We know that planning and executing a successful brand experience is not a cheap venture, but it’s worth every penny. Brand experiences blow traditional advertising channels out of the water- and deliver the greatest long-term ROI.
After an experience, 98% of consumers are more inclined to buy your product or use your services, and 65% of marketers see a direct sales boost from experiential marketing. And they’re the kind of figures we can get behind!
While these experiences usually only involve a few hundred or thousand people, never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing.
If you give guests something worth talking about, they’ll share their experience with an average of 17 people. These people then tell another 1.5, and the snowballing continues. This organic promotion is completely free (yay!), and the most rewarding and valuable adverting medium, as consumers trust their friends.
Getting that mega brand recognition doesn’t happen overnight. A kickass brand experience takes a lot of meticulous planning. But sweating the small stuff is what we do! Here at this is LESTER, we honour our creativity every step of the way, and design killer experiences that garner great long-term results. Drop us an email or give us a bell for anything experiential- we’d love to get started on something great!