Capture hearts and minds with experiential marketing

What is Experiential Marketing?

Experiential marketing involves activities that teach an audience about a brand or company. These experiences range from taking pictures with branded items to completing or participating in a task that aligns with brand or company values and focuses on “hands-on” activities.

Why is Experiential Marketing Important?

When consumers (participants, spectators, corporate partners, etc.) at your event interact with a part of an event, the emotional attachment between them and the cause or brand tends to strengthen. This could be something as simple as taking a picture with a cool or informative wall, contributing a piece to achieve a larger goal, or as elaborate as writing specific, emotional connections to a CMN hospital for everyone to see. Some previous examples of experiential marketing at our events, as you may know, have been the diaper wall, penny wall, giant cross-stitch, and the experience room at DMLC.

A positive consumer interaction with an activation can help build a feeling of contribution to the cause. Based on your event activation, attendees might be more likely to share pictures of interesting or meaningful experiences on social media. These pieces are usually the fun, creative, or tug at emotional heartstrings. However, experiential marketing is not just about making sure that someone has fun. Experiential marketing allows attendees to learn by doing and take-away something from that experience.

Here are some initial questions to consider when determining if an experiential marketing piece or campaign is effective:

-What goals am I looking to achieve?

-What does someone learn after interacting with this element?

-What makes this exciting and interesting?

What are some Examples of Experiential Marketing?

Nine intriguing experiential marketing ideas:

https://www.helpscout.com/blog/experiential-marketing/

Historically, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile has been a brand icon for Oscar Mayer. After driving to different cities, brand specialists set up marketing activations to encourage consumers to buy Oscar Mayer products.

https://www.bonappetit.com/uncategorized/article/what-goes-on-in-the-wienermobile

AdAge: The Best of Experiential 2019

Here are some insightful infographics about the impact of experiential marketing:

https://www.limelightplatform.com/blog/roi-experiential-marketing-trends-figures

How can I add Experiential Marketing Elements to my Dance Marathon?

Great question! In the next few months, we will be releasing a blog/video series in an effort to help your Dance Marathon team create fun, engaging, and thoughtful experiential marketing elements. We plan to share more ideas, step by step directions for building these elements, and more! Stay tuned for these upcoming monthly features!