B2B Experiential Marketing – When does it work?
What is experiential marketing? On the rise in recent years, engagement marketing consultants in pune and experiential marketing is all about customer interaction with your brand. It offers a unique experience with products or services, allowing customers to get a feel for how they would use it in their lives.
For years marketers have been trying to get customers to use and trial their products. In this way it’s not a new concept; there have however, certainly been some innovative spins on how it’s done. Let’s look at experiential marketing, how it can work for B2Bs and some of the ways it can help build your brand.
Emotional + Experiential Branding = Experiential Marketing The two elements that underpin experiential marketing are emotional branding and experiential branding.
Emotional branding: is about building the relationship between your brand and customers. Promoting emotional benefits like brand trust, security and credibility as a result of engaging with your brand is crucial.
Experiential branding: designs and creates interactions that are sensory in nature, which emotionally influences preferences, shaping brand perception, and influencing satisfaction and loyalty.
An excellent experiential marketing campaign is able to fuse both elements seamlessly together.
Experiential Marketing for B2Bs In recent years interest in B2B experiential marketing has grown and some of the initial hesitation surrounding it has been replaced with a working understanding, when to do it, and how it stimulates ROI.
For B2Bs, experiential marketing is generally less obvious, with the focus often on services (for example) in place of B2C exciting product launches. Oftentimes the B2B budget is also stretched. However we are seeing marketers begin to recognise the potentials that the experience can offer consumers.
“The success of brand experience within the B2C market has not gone unnoticed, and B2B marketers are waking up to the potential of brand experience. However, there is a long way to go before they catch up with their B2C counterparts.” – Graham Ede, Ion Group
3 Examples of B2B experiential marketing Location with B2Bs can be one of the major barriers, and while it may not be easy to do experiential marketing in quite the same way as B2C, there’s certainly room to employ some of the same principals. Creating sensory interactions that promote core feelings of trust, and awareness of your product or services is central to this.
Fulcrum marketing in public spaces – Linked with experiential, some marketers use a form of Fulcrum marketing. They tend to hold this drive in places where there are high concentrations of business buyers. Branded promotional staff can offer business people the opportunity to enter in a promotion, or sign up to attend an event whilst promoting the benefits of the product.
demonstrations & reward – as part of a targeted marketing strategy, those in the IT space can offer information via webinar or video, which can showcase some aspects of the technology solution. Some marketing and web-based tools such as offer a free trial period, together with online coaching via Skype. This allows the user to build confidence in using the tool, and to experience all of the benefits of the trial period. At the end of the trial period (7 days), the participant is given a report with feedback on how well they have used the tool. Then they are awarded a certificate.
Surprises and games – Surprising customers by showing up where they least expect you, gifting them, or sending them a card is a way to provide an out of the box experience and drive brand awareness. Another option could be to exhibit at a partner’s event as IBM did. Their interactive stand came complete with a candy bar, and plasma screens which posted live tweets from event attendees. Digital technology such as apps and games are also opportunity areas, and while often costly, look set to become more widespread and affordable in future.
Experiential marketing reflects the growing importance of emphasising emotions to build successful brands. Digital media offers expanding opportunities to offer such experiences.
In the ever-competitive B2B marketplace, it’s no longer enough to rely on traditional modes for lead generation. B2B marketers need to consider the complete kit that is available to them including; social media, mobile, search, paid advertising, print, telemarketing and increasingly placing emotion at the heart of it all with an experiential approach.
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Digital Marketing Requires Planning
Marketing and advertising inevitably require some lead time but too often businesses don’t plan ahead. For marketing dollars to be well spent some preparation is required before implementation. It is important to plan far enough ahead to establish objectives, determine processes for execution, decide who the responsible parties will be and then follow through. It’s expensive when these steps are not taken.
Some marketing campaigns take more lead time than others. If a lot of different tasks performed by different specialists are involved, the requirements for planning expand. Fewer moving parts are less cumbersome to implement.
Websites In most cases, marketing begins with the website. New web pages are relatively easy to add. Using a content management system, web pages only require a facilitator.
Email Despite the emphasis on other channels, email marketing continues to be a staple for most businesses. Three quarters of all companies surveyed in 2011 said that email provides an excellent or good return on their investment. And email marketing programs like MailChimp, Constant Contact and others help you create professional looking emails and also determine your effectiveness through analytics.
Direct Mail Direct mail marketing can be extremely effective for retail stores and local service providers because it is memorable and can be well targeted. New programs and processes have made direct mail quite valuable in converting prospects but a good campaign requires a month or more before delivery. Before a piece can be in the recipient’s hands copywriting, images, design, research and mailing are all required. You can learn more about direct mail on a previous post .
Social Media Assisting connections between people and collective sharing of information, social media includes short posts, blogs, video, and interactive forums. Social media requires knowledge of the technologies required and the time to maintain the campaign. Unfortunately, what started out looking like a magic bullet requires some lead time after all. It is most effective with an editorial calendar and whenever a campaign is established it must be sustained.
Pay-Per-Click To use the online advertising channel called PPC, you need to determine the keywords that your best prospects will use to search for you. With PPC, when the potential client uses that search term they will see an ad for you. If your ad is enticing they will be drawn to click through to your website and hopefully will decide to buy.
The best news is that you only pay for the advertisement when someone chooses to click on it and you can establish a budget before you start. Once you have spent your limit, your ads are no longer available.
Planning? You must determine what the relevant keywords are and what content you need in your ad. For some businesses, PPC is a great marketing channel.
Banner Advertising Banners include images but work like Pay-Per-Click. Well done, adding images will increase their effectiveness, but it also adds to the time and costs.
Radio In some industries, radio is spectacularly successful as a marketing channel. Having more spots is most effective . The lead time required is minimal, especially with a smaller or more tightly targeted market. Make sure which format that will attract your best prospects by checking the demographics and then write the copy carefully.
Television TV has the advantage of being both visual and auditory, but it is also more expensive than radio. The reach is even more fragmented and the costs are usually higher than radio because it requires sound and video. Writing, presentation, and talent all count so production takes time. In some industries and markets it is very effective, however.
Events and Sponsorships It seems obvious that there are a lot of moving parts in producing an event. The easiest way to do an event is to let someone else manage all the production aspects and be the provider of the branding and hosting. Since the venue, decorations, advertising, registrations, financial management, traffic flow, refreshments, lighting, entertainment, parking, communications, staffing, etc. will all need to be handled, putting on an event always takes time.
Sponsoring an event is much less difficult. Finding the right relationships to leverage and then using them to improve your visibility and sales can be done reasonably quickly.
In Short The key to successful marketing is planning ahead. Start your marketing campaigns in advance to put all the pieces together.
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