Savvy brands have been activating in experiential marketing for years and for many reasons. Event marketing and experiential activations create rich, emotional connections with consumers.
It doesn’t matter if you’re referring to a large, big-beat event, brand sponsorship, guerrilla marketing activation or a pr stunt brands are generating new creative initiatives that demand consumer attention.
Events generate valuable content for consumers and valuable data for brands
These activations become social media fodder, encouraging consumers and attendees to tweet, instagram, snap and stream content. This shared content drastically amplifies the reach of an individual event, providing sponsors with unique insights on how consumers are reacting to campaigns.
Google Allo – Experiential Marketing Activation – Boston University
Experiential campaigns are going beyond brand awareness and are driving direct ROI in the form of immediate product sales and hard to find consumer data.
How are brands gathering data from Events?
One of the most popular ways that brands are tracking consumer engagement is by tracking a unique hashtag that is dedicated to a specific event. All content posted to this particular hashtag can be monitored and analyzed which allows you to generate data on the direct impact that occurs online. Deep social listening helps give us a sense of the impact of the event.
Data that can be extracted from social hashtags may include:
1. Deeper understanding of your audience, such as their gender, age, and interests.
2. Deeper understanding of the performance of your content, which content performs, and doesn’t. What times your content performs best. What is it that makes your content perform exactly.
3. What were the most engaging posts? Who are the most important contributors?
4. What is the sentiment of your audience? Did you make them happy, sad, or angry?
Wendys Experiential Marketing and Product Sampling Activation
The Power of Experiences
There is a power and impact of experiences that are able to create emotional connections between brands and consumers. These days, there are swaths of individuals who are spending their time and money on experiences. This creates a unique opportunity for brands and marketers who want to connect the dots.
According to Event Marketing Institute’s Event Track benchmarking report, seventy two percent of consumers said they positively view brands that provide quality event content and experiences. More importantly, 74 percent indicated that engaging with branded event marketing experiences makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted. That explains why the study found that more than half of brands were increasing their spending on experiential campaigns and events.
The Mezzetta Table – Experiential Tasting Activation
Data is absolutely changing the game in Experiential and Event Marketing
We’re using rich data from experiential activations in order to inform strategy and creative by measuring during the execution and generating actionable insights after the event. This provides our clients with a fully transparent ROI on their activation.
As consumers get more and more accustomed to personalization, they expect this in the events they attend. Integrating personalization into new technologies, mobile apps and social media increases the event experience for the consumer.
Diablo 3 – Rise of the Necromancer Twitch Broadcast
Data is used far before the event itself
Data helps brands and marketers reach the consumer in the right place, at the perfect time with the right messaging. This allows us to create targeted immersive experiences that can accelerate brands beyond a static moment in time. There’s a lot of research and thinking that goes into deciding the actual geographical location to activate at. Big Data helps us understand where our consumers spend their time, what they like, and what they’re interested in. All of this helps our producers decide on the ideal location and timing for brand activations.
If you have questions about using data to improve your experiential activations contact BeCore today! We’d love to partner with you on your next project!