Is experiential marketing the future of retail?

Customers no longer rely on what they see on television or social media to decide on whether to buy from a business or not! Experiential marketing creates a long-lasting effect and has more influence on future buying.
Why does experiential hold so much value?

Strategic planning and execution of experiential marketing require that you forget everything that you know about digital marketing.

Experiential marketing, unlike many forms of brand advertising, rides on personalizing the customer experience to a deeper level.

In other words, experiential marketing is the bigger version of any marketing campaign that there is. It arouses feelings of any customer much faster and efficiently than any method out there.

• Retail businesses can take advantage of this type of marketing to bring in new customers and ensure that they retain the ones they already have.

Why Experiential marketing for retail business?

Here are reasons as to this type of marketing are the future of retail businesses:

1.   Increase online visibility

Most of your audience is on social media for a reason or another. Research shows that most customers will trust an online review and get propelled to buy.  The trick is to take every single advantage of any online reviews your businesses attract. Once you have that constant engagement, you can work towards having your campaign that aims at attracting other means of marketing.

Successful experiential marketing has an indirect digital marketing strategy that has many effects on your online visibility.  You may then leverage on that to create a successful digital marketing strategy.

2.   Build brand affinity

 There are several brands out there in your industry. This means that your customers can switch easily between brands.  You need to come up with ways to retain your customers. One of the best ways to ensure that you have a loyal customer base is to give them an original feel of your products and services. 

 With experiential marketing, your customers can learn more about your services and products. This is possible because they get to test the products free of charge. This is the best way to build brand affinity.

3.   Customer engagement

People love to showcase what they have to others. The most valuable factor in the experiential campaign is customer engagement.

You will get more people posting on their social media platforms if they genuinely love what you have going on. People share what they like, and in that event, you will significantly increase your audience and customer engagement.

You can quickly build your customer engagement both online and offline using experiential marketing and without allocating funding to your retail business marketing.

Types of experiential marketing

There is so much value that experiential marketing brings to your business. There are a good number of advertising ways that can fit every kind of business. It all depends on the type of business that you offer and your target audience.

 Workshops

The workshop is a type of experiential marketing that allows you to bring an industry expert to your audience for guidance. The main is to make your audience learn one or two things from the sessions.  To make the most out of your workshop, you will have to include a large number of an audience because word of mouth spreads quickly, and this will get things going well for your business.

 Product testing

Product testing is the most common type of experiential marketing. You may have already tested some free brand products.  It is simple to do the same for your business; all you have to do is organize a product testing with free samples. This will, without a doubt, bring in new customers.

 Tours

Customers are always interested to know the origin of products they use. You can take advantage of a product manufacturing facility nearby to be able to create that engagement experience that they will remember years to come.

How to implement experiential marketing in your retail business

The first step of discovering the benefits of experiential marketing is to study your target market keenly. Find out what motivates them and what their pain points are.

Think about the message you want to send out there through your experiential marketing. You can then proceed to create an event around the idea and choose effective event promotion channels to use.

Digital marketing channels are useful when it comes to event promotion.  You may use social media to announce your upcoming event. Alternatively, consider live streaming.

There is more than you can get out of experiential marketing when you partner with a reputable brand in your industry. You need to find a balance between services that are offered by the guest brand and those that you provide.

Film the event and let your audience watch you live. Several channels support live videos, such as  Facebook and YouTube.

 Conclusion

We are living in economic times where experience and convenience are driving the whole customer experience. Human being craves for interactions. This is the reason as to why most brands are striving to come up with solutions that give a consistent level of personalized experience across all aspects.

It is no secret that the face of the retail business is changing in a significant way. You will see companies all over striving to create social media presence, engage with their customers, and build a brand with a loyal customer base.

A well planned, experiential marketing campaign can bring life into any brand. Especially if you use the OnSpot Social app.