Why a Combination of Digital + Experiential Marketing is a Recipe for Success
DIGITAL + EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING = BUSINESS GROWTH
These days, we live in two worlds; the digital and the experiential. With the speed advancing technology, the line between life online and in person is blurring, and the opportunity to thrive in both has greatly increased. These two worlds are very defined, very trackable and very targeted. Most importantly, they are both essential to communicate with your consumer and grow your business.
Think about your typical day. You probably spend roughly 50% of it online, hanging out on social media, email, reading blogs and articles, visiting websites and living life through a screen. The other 50% is engaging with coworkers, clients, family, friends and going to social events where an in person experience is taking over. At times, you’re doing both at the same time. Hectic, I know, but this is the age we live in.
In order to touch the people, your customer, you need to live in both of these worlds and do it well. You need to have multiple points of interaction with people, show them you can serve a need or desire that they have and create a lead funnel so you can communicate with and build a relationship with them. It’s all about people and it’s all about the world(s) that we live in.
THE DIGITAL WORLD
Let’s look at the BIG 5 in digital and come to grips with “reality”.
Social: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
- The biggest three social platforms that cover all your bases
- Everyone can win here, because everyone is here
- You can market for free
- You can do paid social advertising that is highly targeted and very fruitful
- They know everything about you, and your customer too
Websites
- If you don’t have one, you’re not a real business
- Everything you need to know about a company is, or should be here
- You can do business transactions here
- You own it, your strongest platform and home base
- Publish your own blog content here to educate your customer and utilize in your marketing funnel
- Everyone hates it, and uses it. Email marketing works
- Hallowed ground; if you make it into an inbox and stay there, they care about you
- One of the most effective ways to market
- My grandmother uses it and writes me beautiful notes; the days of letters may be nearly dead but communicating your thoughts in words will never die
- All knowing, biggest search engine in the world
- Everyone uses it
- Serves you ads all day long (you can be doing that)
- Home of Adwords, an effective search marketing tool
- SEO does work
- Teaches you about Ghegis Khan’s reign and how to properly play doubles in ping-pong
YouTube
- Second biggest search engine in the world
- Video is king
- Serves you ads all day long (you can be doing that too)
THE EXPERIENTIAL WORLD
Lest look at 5 big pieces of the experiential puzzle right now.
Experiential Events
Events are great ways to connect with people in real time. The key to a great experiential event is to create an environment that is memorable and that hits as many of the senses as possible. You should make sure that your branding is prevalent and done tastefully, the music is on point and live, the food is quality, the drinks are flowing and the atmosphere and people are connected. The last point is crucial, setting a tone to connect people before the event with a theme, attire or overall mentality will allow everyone to have a common ground before they even walk into the activation. Connect people in an authentic way and have fun!
Photo and Video
You have to capture high quality photos and video, and have a strategy to release them. You cannot cheap on this and you have one shot to do it; at the experience itself. Make it count by documenting everything and utilize this content for years to come. Use this in all your digital marketing platforms for ads, posting and sharing during and after the event activation.
Activations
Within the event, there need to be activations that engage the attendee with the brand in a unique way. Back to the senses, the key is to involve as much feel, taste, touch, sound and smell. Here is an example of one Mole Street activation where we use what we call the Cheer Machine. Check out this case study to dive into this example of an activation.
Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality - It’s here and it is amazing. It’s scary and it’s beautiful. The possibilities are endless here and depending on your budget and your business, this can be a tool that will create an unforgettable experience to come. The best way to utilize VR is to create a customized experience tied to your brand identity and share with your consumer. Check out this example of VR in action.
Amplification
They say what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. That’s not the slogan for experiential! You want to have as much digital amplification out in the world as possible through your advertising channels and your attendee’s channels. Try live streaming, facebook live or other real time videos onsite. Instagram-able branded backgrounds are great for engagement and sharing. Plan to amplify before, during and after the event. Create a master content plan and calendar including the creative and execute on it. Don’t underestimate the power of a good old fashioned memorable moment – the key is to document and amplify online!
THE RECIPE
You can focus exclusively on digital, or experiential and have success but results will be exponentially greater when your marketing plan includes the proper doses of both. In some businesses, it may make sense to shade more heavily to a particular approach however every business can benefit from the combination. Here is our topline approach.
- Strategy
- Onboarding and discovery
- Deep dive on experiential and digital strategies that are best for your business
- Build a strategic marketing and tactical marketing plan that lays out the why and the how so you can get to the execute button
- Create a timeline that is realistic and achieve it
- Beautiful Design
- Make everything look gorgeous, great design, stunning video and photo, no shortcuts
- Quality advertisements and crisp branding that utilize this design aesthetic will unify the brand digitally and onsite at the experiential activations
- Smart Development
- Develop clean website structure and smart digital marketing funnels
- Create a smart onsite development strategy to capture information at the experience that can be actionable before during and after the event. ie – email, cell-phone, social media or other data
- Execution
- Start acting on the strategic and tactical marketing plan and give yourself a break, some things will work and some won’t. Track them and double down when something starts to hit the mark
- Sales
- Once leads start to role in, make sure your sales team is intact and ready to act
There is a recipe for marketing success. Just like making a great meal, the recipe can be simple or complex, but you definitely need the right ingredients and you definitely need to execute. Give us a call to discuss how we can help.
By: Mole Street
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