Why Is It Important To Match Experiential Marketing And Social Media Strategy?

Social media marketing is becoming the most sought after means of boosting sales in the world. There are numerous tips, techniques, strategies, etc. you can utilize when marketing via different social networking platforms.

Among them, experiential marketing has been considered by many businesses according to its potential for engaging.

It is actually marketing products/services via engaging the customers and make a relationship with them. In other words, you have to experience a face-to-face and interactive marketing approach to offer a product so that people feel they are part of them.

In these experiences, you have to consider customers’ desires to be the priority. Of course, it cannot be effective without unifying your event marketing strategy with your social media approaches.

So we’re going to discuss the importance of using social media in this post to help you promote your experiential marketing.

Face-to-face engagement

Despite the fact that the world is heading toward being more digitalized, face-to-face relationships are still the best way of engagement. Although online connections are way easier and faster, people like to interact more realistic and know what behind the scene is.

In fact, none on digital techniques can make loyal connections as strong as brand experiences can. The ability to create lasting friendships is the key aspect of brand experiences. There are numerous surveys indicating the positive results of experiential campaigns in terms of loyalty and engagement.

Additionally, many customers have responded that they trust face-to-face engagement more than any digital means of contact.

Audience reach

In spite of the beneficial aspects of experiential marketing, it should be said that it is hard to make it spread. The strong relationship you make with your audience in an event cannot go viral just by face-to-face methods. In other words, the main drawback of face-to-face connections is the limited amount of reach.

This is exactly the weakness of many marketers in holding a successful event. They cannot promote their campaign and get the attention of more people by a single experience. Obviously, you cannot hold experiences one after another because it will pose a heavy burden on your resources.

Social media has made it possible to reach out to a considerable number of audiences with a single post. Unfortunately, many marketers cannot use social media platforms correctly to support their investment on experiential marketing.

Social media platforms

You probably want to target as many relevant audiences as possible. In fact, you have to share the moments of your experiential marketing with niche audiences. So you have to think of those social platforms that your audiencees are active on.

Of course, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. are the top social networks. But you have to study them in more detail to optimize your activities. You can go through relevant groups and channels and engage with active users in your niche.

Remember that the content you have created about your campaign cannot be shared if you have not targeted your audience right. Of course, it is strongly dependent on the type of your products/services and the characteristics of your audience.

For example, it is said that women comprise the majority of more than 300 million monthly active users of Pinterest. So, if you have a product related to them, you have to put Pinterest first in your social strategies.

Here is a summarized comparison of different platforms:

1. Facebook

Facebook is the top social networking service with more than 2.5 billion monthly active users. Sharing your experience through the Event Page on this site is a useful way to increase audience reach. You should also think of the experience title, introduction, cover photo, location, etc. Remember that using trendy keywords for introducing your events is a must.

2. Instagram

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social networks with more than 1 billion monthly active users owned by Facebook. Stories and Live are two popular features that can get people to join your experience. Of course, the more engagement you can achieve via Instagram, the more efficient your experience will be.

3. Snapchat

Snapchat is also a popular social media and a fantastic means of targeting your audience. To get people to know about your event, you can create your own filter. Filters and Lenses can add styles to your photos and videos and show where you are and what you are doing.

4. LinkedIn

You can use LinkedIn promotions because they can provide a unique audience reach. It is a business and employment-oriented network, and you can access professionals, and partners via its website or mobile app.

Content creation

Another important factor you have to think of is content generation. You have to make as much creative content related to your campaign as you can.

Although quantity is of paramount importance, you should not ignore the quality of your content. If you want your content to be shared just like wildfire, the quality of your content comes first.

Moreover, you might have noticed that people usually pay attention to visual content more that texts; even timely, evergreen, and unique texts. A single image can get a massive number of likes, shares, and comments as opposed to long, boring texts.

Certainly, this feature can be extended to videos. This is exactly why many people are heading toward visual-based social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

So, you must take high-quality images and videos during your event marketing and share them based on a regular schedule. We would strongly recommend you use automation tools for scheduling your social media activities especially for posting your experience’s contents.

Do not forget to use live videos as they are the newest and the most realistic means of digital connections. You can bring your experience to your audience’s smartphone instantly and without any retouching. Using this feature, other audiences who could not attend your event can lively interact with you.

In fact, you are promoting the experience itself, not a secondary, changed content. Bear in mind that authentic, live contents are more influential as they can convey emotion, imagery, and sense of belonging to the event.

Effective engagement via social media

Remember that you should engage with your audience via social media and allow them to chime in your conversation about the event. You have to engage before, during, and after the experience.

Keeping the event in the public eye for a long time must be your purpose from social media promotion. Your presence on social media should last from before the experience to days after the event. The longer you remain on top-of-mind, the wider audience reach you will gain.

On the other hand, analyzing the results of your campaign is of great importance. You have to measure significant metrics to recognize your strengths and weaknesses. By getting feedbacks and optimizing your plans and methods, you can perform better in the next experience.

Influencer marketing

Numerous companies are taking advantage of influencer marketing via social media to improve their brand awareness and increase their sales.

It is a lucrative market on some platforms especially Instagram. According to Socialtradia, the number of people who want to become an influencer even with fake Instagram followers has recently skyrocketed.

You can achieve the highest amount of audience reach if you intertwine experiential and influencer marketing. Face-to-face interactions with people allow them to feel that they are part of your story.

On the other hand, influencers can encourage people to accept the goodness of a product/service and finally purchase it.

You should try to provide influencers with compelling content from your event so that they feel they are part of your strategy instead of a simple seller. We also recommend you to balance your budget among four levels of influencers: Mega, Macro, Micro, and Nano-influencers. The more followers and the more relevant niche, the better, and of course, the more expensive.

Although choosing an influencer is strongly dependent on the type of your product/service, we suggest starting with Micro-influencers in your niche. They are usually more engaged with your target audience, especially for specific products.

If you match your influencer marketing with experiential marketing, you will have remarkable results. You can ask your followers to come to your event to visit the influencers and ask influencers to post user-generated content on their profiles.

In this way, you can kill two birds with a single stone. First, more people will be encouraged to join your experience to be able to meet the influencers. Second, you can have more shares because every user wants to get their followers to know that they have been engaged with a famous influencers face-to-face.

Conclusion

As we discussed earlier, effective experiential events generate ongoing engagement between customers and businesses. Of course, social media plays a pivotal role in strengthening this engagement and convert it into a lasting relationship.

So, what do you think of experiential marketing?