During a recent marketing seminar I attended geared towards women business owners and the cultivation of their brand, I learned of a new industry buzz word – “Experiential Marketing.” The speaker defined this term as a means of inviting the customer in to become an active participant in your brand. She also noted that it is important to engage all of the senses in order to promote the full brand experience and to focus more on the psychographics of your target audience rather than the demographics. A little more outside research turned up this definition, “an art of creating an experience resulting in an emotional connection to a person, brand, product or idea.”
While these definitions make the practice seem lofty and rich, the root of experiential marketing is essentially the basic principles of effective public relations. By connecting to your audience on an emotional level, you can foster positive relations and total brand engagement.
Social media has quickly risen to the zenith of public relation channels (and experiential marketing) because of its effectiveness at connecting with a target audience on a personal level. In an Internet driven world, people have essentially created their own personal Internet real estate that is open to marketing touch points – free of charge. Whether through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (the list goes on), smart marketers can infiltrate the personal space of their target audience with marketing messages that don’t appear to be such.
Fostering experiential marketing behaviors in your marketing efforts is essential to creating a brand in which people connect and trust.
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