Experience is the best marketer

Marketers are realising that experience is at the very core of all their branding efforts. And smart marketers are harnessing this insight to their advantage. By using experiences they are making deep and meaningful connections with their consumers.

What is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is not one specific marketing approach. It's a general term for creating fresh, interactive, relevant and memorable connections between brands and consumers in their natural environments.

In essence, experiential marketing is a sophisticated term for getting into public spaces and enticing your consumer to interact with your brand.

Why is the experience so powerful?

Brands are placed anywhere the audience is most receptive, whether at a café, standing in a queue, stuck in traffic or waiting to get on an airplane. The deeper and more striking the experience you provide, the more relevant connections you will forge with your consumers.

A great brand experience satisfies your target market's senses, allowing you to connect and engage with your intended audience. In addition, if the brand experience is relevant and memorable, it will naturally create advocates for your brand that can set off a successive virus of word of mouth referrals. Smart marketers know that this is one of the most powerful marketing achievements.

What can experience do?

According to research, experiential marketing:

• Creates spontaneous product purchases
  
• Increases sales and customer loyalty
  
• Makes consumers more receptive to your brand's traditional advertising
  
• Enhances brand perception
  
• Is effective across many product categories

How does experiential work with traditional?

In marketing, you want to speak to your consumer's grey matter - left and right. For this reason, a multi-dimensional approach is recommended, combining traditional and non-traditional approaches.

Experiential marketing targets the right brain, touching your consumer's emotions and aspirations. It's a direct, one-on-one interaction between your brand and your consumer. However, most purchasing decisions are not based on emotion alone, reason is called on as well. This is where traditional advertising comes in. Traditional marketing provides the left-brain rational facts and stats to compliment the emotional experience.

By combining traditional and non-traditional marketing methods, you will touch consumers' emotions while providing them with all the supporting rational facts and stand a better chance of tipping them over the edge to becoming a brand loyal customer.

A Guerrilla experiential strike

In a recent experiential strike for Vespa South Africa, Guerrilla Marketing used the metaphor of a super hero flying through the traffic. The aim was to provide a humorous and memorable experience for consumers to experience Vespa's unique ability to beat congestion at the appropriate place and time – stuck in a traffic jam.

“Traffic Fighting Superheroes” were dispatched throughout Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town during peak traffic. With capes trailing behind them, the Vespa Superheroes weaved through congestion on their Super Vespas displaying the message,

“You don't have to be a superhero to fly through traffic”

The campaign engaged Vespa's target audience and generated a wild fire of word-of-mouth conversation as well as media interest and PR. Vespa also enjoyed a measured increase in awareness and sales after the Guerrilla strike.