A lot can be learned from Experiential Marketing.

Aside from a select few online to offline campaigns, in the experiential space there are no cookies, no tracking, and the best data that has been collected, by even the larger brands, has been done through surveys, which can be imprecise. But, what has seemed like a problem can actually be viewed as an asset now as we are approaching the cookie apocalypse.

Here are 4 things your digital campaign needs to learn from Experiential Marketing:

1. Surprise and Delight

2. Transparent Personalization

3. The Power of Free

4. Playing the Long Game for True LTV

1. Surprise and Delight

Experiential at its core is just that, experiences. Providing memorable interactions is what it is all about. These can vary from Honest Tea’s mobile tea gardens, to Bud Light’s City Takeovers, to Google Giant Gacha Machine, but they all share the same DNA of surprise and Delight.

While this may seem all and well for experiences and events, how do you translate this into something workable for your digital campaign?

One prime example comes to mind from a time before the internet, The Gold Box from Wunderman.

Read that article for the details, but in summary: In 1977, Wunderman was about to lose one of their biggest accounts, Columbia House Record and Tape Club, but they made a wager and hedged their bets all on a Gold Box hidden in the catalogue and throughout a list of magazine publications that were popular at the time.

Viewers of the commercial were asked to seek out the golden boxes, if found they would receive a free record from the Columbia House Catalogue. The catch, only viewers of the advertisement and those they shared the information with would know that the gold box held any sort of significance.

Instead of buying major TV spots they ran two campaigns simultaneously, a print ad and a late night tv ad. Combined, these would still be cheaper than purchasing the prime time slots. The campaign was a huge success because Wunderman knew how to surprise and delight his audience.

By leading the viewers on a chase they effectively engaged them outside of solely converting or clicking they made them feel as though they were a part of something special, an experience that they can share.

2. Transparent Personalization

Another staple of experiential marketing is the face to face interaction. Often, brands will have a representative there to guide and ask customers about what they would want to try and/or do.

This could be implemented into digital in the same way, asking customers to select what they would want to engage with when visiting your site rather than relying purely on data collected without the customer having a grasp of what they are signing up for. 

This system could be a white list of brands or types of services the user is interested in seeing ads from or they could select that they are open to anything. It may cause some initial friction for publishers that have co-opted this, but the overall ad experience would feel less invasive. 

Another part of this that would involve 1st party data to engage the core customer, would be leveraging a brand’s mailing list. Asking for survey responses to find out what your core audience would be interested in seeing from you beyond your product offerings. Although the response rate may be relatively low, this would offer a general idea of great starting points.

Intent uses this idea of transparent personalization well and Dot Dash is doing intent really well. Dot dash offers highly specified content from experts on a wide variety of topics. Brands can use this as a launch pad, as customers who are on these pages have already declared their intent, making the whole interaction feel personal in a way that is not creepy.

3. The Power of Free

Sales on products go a long way and really make numbers look good, but there is a more effective price point, $0.00. As Dan Arielly outlines in his book predictably irrational, The Power of Free can go a long way.

This is in large part the thesis of experiential marketing. Give people an engaging free experience and they will feel connected to the brand and stay loyal for the long term.

ROI and ROAS have provided great tools to measure the effect of a campaign during this era of marketing, but leveraging the power of free to bring a connection to the brand would lead to more LTV per customer. Amazon is a great example of this. In the US, Amazon's return policy is hard to beat, 30 days return, no questions asked. This can be seen as a 30 day trial period for almost any product. 

Don't sell tangibles? There is always the free content route as well. Data shows that brands that use free content well retain customers better with 42% of b2b marketers rating their content marketing as effective. 

4. Playing the Long Game for True LTV

One thing that stands out to me from my time in experiential is how aware of the long game we were. We knew that the people were not going to try a sample and immediately run to the nearest store to purchase. The goal for us was to leave a lasting positive impression on each attendee.

The temptation in digital is to focus on the conversions generated from your campaign, and for the better part of a decade, digital did this really well. Now moving into the next era of cookieless marketing, the emphasis really needs to move from the conversion itself to true life time value.

Each campaign is just one piece of the puzzle and understanding this while also applying these overall guiding principles will help customers feel excited about your brand and therefore more likely to spend with you and, more importantly, to share your brand with those that trust them.

One company that I feel is really nailing this connection of experiential to digital is Pokemon go. Their live events pour users back through the funnel in a perfect flywheel.

The advertisement of the events leads people back to the game, which is free to play. The event delivers a unique experience that can be shared with friends, leading to higher levels of engagement during and after the event and more spending as well.

Even if you are not a gaming company there are many ways to surprise and delight. Gain the trust of your audience through transparent personalization, leverage the power of free to develop lasting connections, and get good at playing the long game to maximize true LTV.

If you want help coming up with ideas or just want to talk more about these concepts, please be sure to register for our free webinar that takes a deep dive into the best strategies to market in the Next Era of Cookie Solutions(Japanese language only).

Thank you, I am looking forward to hearing about your experiences!

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Bryan Rios
Marketing Specialist

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