4 Mistakes You Must Avoid When Organising Experiential Marketing Campaigns

In a world where TV and print advertisements are on buses, billboards, magazines, cereal boxes, telephone poles, shop windows, and anywhere else consumers care to look, it is fair to say that traditional advertising rarely surprises. This is causing problems for businesses, because it means that shoppers are always looking for new ways to interact with brands.

The good news is that experiential marketing offers a solution. It gives consumers the chance to feel, touch, smell, and play with the products and experiences being sold. It puts them in direct contact with the brand itself, so that they can make fully informed purchasing decisions. And, of course, it helps them have fun while they’re doing it.

Yet, organising experiential marketing events is no easy feat. There are a lot of pitfalls and you need to learn how to avoid them if you want things to run smoothly.

Mistake One: Treating Experiential Marketing as a Gimmick

In many ways, this type of promotion is based on gimmicks. But it is also much more than that, because it forges connections between suppliers and consumers. It drives interpersonal interactions by speaking to people on a ‘one to one’ level. What businesses are doing is giving shoppers the tools with which to create their own experiences, so the meaning generated is much deeper and harder to forget.

Mistake Two: Trying to Please Everybody

It is difficult to make experiential marketing events a success without targeting a clear and well defined audience. This might be a fairly large audience, but it is important to know what makes it members tick. This form of promotion isn’t really designed to be a blanket technique; to make your experience appealing you need to link its demographic to its aims and purpose.

Mistake Three: Not Spending Enough Time Planning

Obviously, the size of the event will determine how long the planning process needs to be. On the other hand, even relatively small ‘experiences’ require a lot of thought and organisation. You are aiming to give guests and visitors an unforgettable memory – one that will always remind them of your brand – and this is likely to involve hundreds of separate elements.

Mistake Four: Not Having a Big Enough Budget

Budgeting is an essential part of experiential marketing, because it can be deceptively hard to judge how much an event will cost. You may be planning something fairly simple, but if it requires external permits, special security, or the use of public spaces, the expenses can climb very quickly. To make sure that you have the right budget for your event, plan meticulously and know exactly how much each aspect or element will cost before you approve it.

by: Antony Hampel