Engage your consumer through a live interaction 

There are over 35,000 Google searches monthly asking ‘what is experiential marketing’. It’s hard to believe that such a fast-growing and popular marketing tool is still so widely misunderstood.  As a valuable component in the marketing mix, experiential marketing will continue to augment traditional campaigns and is therefore an important concept for all marketing enthusiasts to understand.

We define experiential marketing as ‘the act of connecting consumers with a brand through a live interaction’.  This experience provides consumers with the ability to understand a product or service by using their senses and engaging with it.  Whether tasting new low-fat ice cream, watching HD animation on a new flat-screen, or pressing the accelerator of a hybrid car during a test drive; providing an experience is one of the greatest ways for a brand to create new customers as well as retain existing customers.

In creating an environment where consumers become excited and engaged in a product, you consequently increase their interest in the brand.  Experiential marketing generates three different levels of customer interest:

1) Brand Awareness

• Use experiential as a tool to remind current users why they should continue using your brand
• Keep your brand top of mind

2) Intent to Purchase

• Build interest in a way that the customer will leave with intent to buy your product
• Drive them online or to retail where they can make their future purchase

3) Sales on the Spot

• Call the customer to action, overcome their objections and complete a transaction

Experiential Marketing is a way to break through the clutter of traditional advertising, meet your customers face to face and build their interest in your brand.  At the end of the day, when customers actually want to participate in your marketing, you will increase your sales and brand equity!

But as a marketer, I get a sense that money is being left on the table. Yes, it is great the consumers are now aware of our products. It’s even better that their intent to purchase has increased. However, where many of us are falling short is in converting the customer interest into sales.

While a customer is interested in the brand, they may not take the next step and make a purchase. Maybe they have an unanswered objection. Maybe they don’t have the time or aren’t interested in the product at that given moment. Maybe they tell themselves they are going to consider it at a later date and never get around to it. Whatever the reason, it’s easy to understand how sales slip by.

So, what is the most effective way to convert customer interest into sales? Ask your customer for a commitment on the spot (yes, it is actually that easy. You can do this by getting them to sign up for a quote, getting them to agree to a risk-free trial or when possible, getting them to make a purchase on the spot.

For example, doing some work at this year’s Canadian International AutoShow (on right now at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre), I encountered a financial institution that was running a great credit card promotion. Customers were certainly interested in the brand, however, the interaction ended with their Promotional Representative driving traffic to the company’s website. Had the organization committed customers to applying for the card on the spot, they would have generated more sales from their promotion.

Asking for some kind of commitment is key. Customers who might not be as interested initially are now more likely to make a purchase because they’ve just had another brand interaction that may help overcome an objection.

If you don’t ask, you wont sell. It’s that simple.

You are likely familiar with the famous words of John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Looking at the returns marketers have come to expect on their marketing efforts, it’s become clear to me that we are in-part focusing on the wrong metrics. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s very important to measure reach and conversion rates, but when you are achieving click through rates of 1%, clearly, there is room for improvement.

I believe one of the metrics we should be focusing more of our attention on is how we can reduce our marketing waste. Since our waste tends to be significantly larger than our productive activities, we can create more value by reducing our waste than by increasing our productive activities.

For example, if we are digital marketers and we focus on increasing our productive activities, we might aim to increase our CTRs by 10% (ie from 1% to 1.1%). However, if we focused on how we can reduce our waste by 10% (ie from 99% to 89.1%), we would improve our overall returns by 9.8%.

So, what do you think? What can you start doing to measure and reduce your waste?

Josh Singer