What Is Experience Marketing?
It’s simply getting customers familiar with your product and creating or jump-starting a strong relationship between that customer and your brand. It can be personal and it’s often unexpected in today’s impersonal digital age.
Consider these examples, all around for a long time:
- Showing a movie trailer to get more people to see a new movie
- Test driving a new car
- Costco’s in-store food samples
- A free week of Netflix to gain new subscribers
- IKEA’s in-store furniture inviting tired shoppers to sit and put their feet up
All of these invite – and hopefully reward – curiosity and customer involvement. When you get to taste, touch, experience or try something new, you are involved and form an opinion. It’s very personal. And memorable – which of course, is what marketing is all about.
Right now, experience marketing is getting new buzz. That’s likely in response to so many national brands overly involved with optimizing digital space. Not very personal. The antithesis of this — providing an evocative customer experience with thoughtful, in-person involvement — has kind of gotten lost.
But your brand or your new item can emerge as fresh and appealing with experience marketing’s highly personal approach. With a little research and planning, there’s a lot that can go right.
Since markets can be highly segmented, considering a touch and feel experience as a part of your overall campaign can be highly original and make a big impact on your targeted market.
You’ll want to begin by listening to your ideal audience. Ask yourself what you believe sets you apart from your competition? What will your potential or established customers want to see, hold, touch, feel, smell, taste, and/or hear? That’s the experience you want to give them.
If you have a food item, it’s obvious customers will want good taste and texture. An excellent example of this was introducing the Impossible Burger to a meat-focused U.S. market a year or so ago. Lots of blind taste-testing against real meat. Then lots of videos showcasing real people experiencing this new product.
What if you are a consumer product? You want your customers to experience the plush of your new fluffy towels or hear the difference on your new speakers, or feel the smooth ride of your new electric bike.
So… what kind of memorable, personal, impactful experience marketing can your company offer – and to what audiences? (We have no shortage of thoughts on the topic. Let’s sit down in person – and experience the sharing of these ideas 😉
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