Event Marketing

How to Drive Experiential Marketing for Your Event

Eventually Learning Team

16 February 2022

Read time 4 minutes 20 seconds

“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.” – Seth Godin

Salesforce has rightly tapped into some experiential marketing statistics stating that around 84% of audiences feel that being treated like an actual person and not just a number is significant for winning a business. Similarly, in event marketing, rather than just treating a person as a source of revenue through registrations, you must make them feel excited about the kind of outstanding experience and engagement they will witness at the event.

Many event marketers have gone beyond event lunches, dinners and networking cocktail sessions to create groundbreaking experiences for attendees. Let’s look at some experiential marketing strategies to drive an engaging event experience for your attendees.

Rip-roaring Experiential Marketing Types for Your Event

To create an immersive experience, you don’t have to plan something very complicated. Even a simple gesture goes a long way! Here are some easy-to-plan event marketing ideas that brands look up to.

Fun activities at kiosks during tradeshows
Business events that host festivals and awards
Product samplings or demos of your services
Tell a unique story of how your brand will uplift the audience
Relaxing retreats and networking
Plan group activities or campaigns for social work and community betterment

A Playbook for Experiential Event Marketing

For any marketing campaign to work, you must align your team to be on the same page. To set a definitive goal for your event marketing campaign, you can ask questions like, “What is my objective?”, “What resources are available at my disposal?” and “What do I want my audience to experience?” to plan an experiential marketing campaign that isn’t sloppy.

Here’s a playbook that we designed to help you plan your experiential event marketing campaign effectively.

Experiential Marketing Playbook

How Can You Measure the ROI of Your Experiential Event Marketing Campaign?

Though it is fun to execute an experiential marketing campaign, the time to calculate your ROI also arrives post-execution. Only after looking at the metrics and analyzing the data collected can you know the success of your campaign. Furthermore, if the ROI is not as expected, you can change your goals and objectives for upcoming events.

Now, there are various ways to calculate your campaign’s ROI; take a look below!

The number of social shares, likes, comments and tagged pictures
Number of downloads of your material/resources
Website traffic
News mentions
Direct purchases/membership/subscribers

Inspiring Examples of Experiential Marketing Campaigns

To help you come up with mind-blowing event marketing ideas, you can take a look at some inspiring examples adopted by various events and brands to create memorable experiences for attendees!

Example 1: Escape the Clutter – Snapchat and IKEA

For augmented reality enthusiasts, the idea comes as a cherry on top! Along with Snapchat, IKEA created an escape room where you have to download the app and collect keys which are basically IKEA’s organizing solutions to clear the clutter and surface as a winner.

Example 2: OGX partners with MKG for an interactive carwash

OGX’s beauty team partnered with MKG to set up a themed car wash to share riveting stories and promote the message of love and self-confidence with the launch of their new hair care line. On social media, attendees were promised a full free giveaway of the products along with a free ticket to a car wash! Sounds exciting, right?

Example 3: Virtual Pride Fest – Hulu

In 2020, Hulu took part in pride month and organized an event to celebrate Hulu’s LGBTQ+ content hub in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first pride march. The event featured DJ sets, dance performances, entertainers and cultural conversations from the LGBTQ+ community.

Wrapping Up

After reading all the interesting facts and examples of experiential marketing, you must have made up your mind! At the same time, we would advise you to weigh in the pros and cons before jumping straight into organizing an experiential event marketing idea for your brand. Do your research, look at more brand stories, define your event objective and goals to move ahead with your event marketing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is experiential event marketing?

Experiential marketing is all about creating buzz, excitement and engagement with the audiences in a memorable way. Through effective experiential event marketing campaigns, you can ensure positive press and keep your attendees coming back to you. You can also refer to experiential marketing as live marketing, participation marketing or simply, event marketing.

What makes an event experiential?

The true meaning of experiential events is when you create opportunities or activities for attendees, immersing them in a wonderful experience to know your brand, products and services. Experiential events have stricken down traditional event formats of just 'sit and watch' for the entire duration.

How has experiential marketing impacted the event industry?

Gone are the olden days of monotonous B2B events! Instead, attendees seek transformational experiences and the only way to provide them with it is to engage in experiential event marketing. Nowadays, most organizers are trying to create live and engaging experiences for attendees, at times by joining hands with key brands to achieve these disruptive attendee experiences.