In recent times, there have been great advances in technology and sources of inspiration which have came from all sorts of places, generating ideas for experiential campaigns. One of the real challenges for brands comes from looking at how to measure the success of an Experiential Campaign.
It seems that advertisers haven’t had to look too far for negative news lately. In fact, If you haven’t seen the latest adweek article on Experiential Marketing, give it a read if you’ve got a chance. It’s titled “Agencies everywhere see experiential marketing as the next big thing, and brands want in.”. In this article they discuss the growing popularity of experiential marketing and how brands are spending more on experiential. They discuss how bigger brands are seeking more detailed metrics on how Experiential’s impact on consumers, they state that speed is an issue in “payback”.
You can’t get an accurate idea of how many people saw your wall mural or street art, and the impact that it had on them. You can’t count clicks like you can with pay per click. It all comes down to understanding the key performance indicators.
What are the key performance indicators of an experiential marketing campaign?
There are a variety of metrics that we use to better understand the success of an event. It all depends on what your business objectives are and what you’re hoping to accomplish, however here are some general metrics that can be used to meter the effectiveness of any experiential marketing campaign
1.) The effectiveness of the location
-How well did consumers flow through your space? ( How much time was spent in the space? )
-Did your consumers experience what you had intended? ( #of conversions compared to other locations)
-How many products were sampled? ( X Products Sampled )
-How was foot traffic? ( X Numbers of people by / Y Time )
2.) The sentiment of the consumer
-How happy was the consumer? ( how many consumers won prizes? how many photos were taken with friends?)
-Did the consumer have a positive experience? ( how many consumers received free swag, or samples?)
3.) The social media buzz by the numbers
-How much content was created at your event space, by consumers, influencers or by the press?
-Which influencers shared content, and on which networks and what were the total impressions and engagement?
-Which press shared content, and on which networks and what were the total impressions and engagement?
-Which consumers, shared content and on which networks, and what were the total impressions and engagement?
-What was the total number of impressions generated by the event?
-How many online/offline sales occurred through social media impressions?
4.) Conversions
-How many sign-ups occurred?
-How much product was sold?
-How many products sampled?
-How many rentals?
5.) Staff Insight
-How well did staff do with attendees?
-Is there any insight from staff?
-How happy was the staff with their interactions with the consumer?
The success of events and experiential marketing campaigns has traditionally been measured post-event. Marketers in the past have recorded social media impressions over the duration of an event to measure how much of a digital splash has occurred, but that doesn’t take a complete picture of the impressions that were made during an experiential activation.
This is why it’s important to use a variety of KPI’s, working on parallel in order to ensure you have a complete picture of the tangible results of your event. Using a single variable for determining success is just not going to cut it. You need to have more thorough data.
Experiential Marketing is what we do. If you have questions about Experiential Marketing, Engagement Marketing or Pop-Up Shops contact BeCore today! We’d love to partner with you!