Get ahead of Competitors Experiential Marketing

Get ahead of Competitors – Maximise Experiential Entertainment for your Marketing needs

From the big corporations, to humble local businesses, marketers and business owners are increasingly turning towards experiential marketing. It’s the solution for involved marketing and effective return on investment. Get ahead of competitors with this guide to experiential marketing. We at Applause Entertainment have been responsible for many exciting experiential marketing campaigns. From an events entertainment consultancy’s perspective, we want to share with you our expert advice. We know how you can maximise experiential entertainment in today’s market needs.

“Experiential marketing is the confluence of marketing and events. Experiential activations aim to create long-term meaningful relationships between brands and audiences by way of creating a one-to-one experience.” – excerpt from Events Management Blog

Consult with Professionals for the best Entertainment options for your Brand and Campaign

An entertainment consultancy will help advise you on how you can maximise the entertainment for your budget and needs. They ask you the right questions to get to the core of what it is you want. And make recommendations that will achieve your marketing goals.

There is different entertainment and ideas that are suitable for different marketing goals; and implementing the wrong one can have a negative impact both on your budget, and on your brand. Entertainment consultants take into account various factors such as “what, when, where, who, and how?”

For example, imagine your brand’s main customer base are corporate professionals. Here is a sample of what a professional entertainment consultant from Applause Entertainment may suggest to you. All in order to capture the right audience in the best way, at the best time, for maximum effect.

Conveying a Brand Message

If the message and experience you want to convey is one that associates your brand with luxury, opulence, and high quality service, a good experiential entertainment option that an Applause Entertainment consultant may recommend is perhaps a shoe-shine station. We can suggest and help install a highly skilled and quality leather-polisher. It could be done in an area where your target market of corporate professionals may spend some downtime; such as in a city square where they take lunch. A leather polisher gives the professionals something tangible they can benefit from, and a welcome opportunity to experience something new. You can place your brand logo and presence in conjunction to the chair. This would reinforce the association of quality and service of your brand with the experience.

There are many other factors that our entertainment consultants will walk you through. To ensure you are investing in the best entertainment for your experiential marketing campaign. If you have an idea in mind but are not sure if it will work, ask our consultants to help you.

Focus on the one-to-one Experience to get ahead of Competitors

The most effective experiential marketing strategies take advantage of entertainment that foster an intimate one-to-one experience. Take a moment to read about several innovative and engaging experiential campaigns from the biggest brands. At their core, each campaign is designed to engage on a personal level – even if for a fleeting moment. That doesn’t mean you have to restrict yourself to entertaining just one person at a time. Depending on your campaign needs, you can also utilize experiential entertainment for small groups. The key is to create deep engagement and meaningful interactivity that focuses on the experience first. Each engagement may allow for replication and simultaneous instances, but they are designed for a personal experience.

Get ahead of Competitors directly

Take this Fake French Artist performer that Applause Entertainment provided for the 2017 Paris 2 Provence in Melbourne for example. In order to provide the festival-goers with a unique experience, the actor would invite guests to sit down and have their portraits drawn. Unknown to the guests (at first), the “artist” is actually an actor who put on a show of being a fancy and fussy French artiste, producing hilariously awful stick figure portraits. The actor stayed in character and provided entertainment for everyone in the vicinity throughout the entire duration of his performance. The gathering crowds enjoyed the interaction with the actor so much, that they began to line up for a portrait despite knowing they’re receiving a comical stick figure, because they desired engaging with the entertainment on a direct level – the value lay in the actual interaction between actor and guests, and not the portrait. The unique one-to-one experience drew amusement and engagement on social media, and solidified the festival’s image of a welcoming and family-friendly homage to French culture, particularly it is a friendly nod to the culture of the Montmartre artists. Don’t only plan for something to “go viral” – it may not adhere to the correct tone for your audience and reduces the intimate relationship with your brand experience. Experiential marketing’s unique strength lays in its flexibility to give your brand a direct connection with your audience. People will naturally talk about, share, and recommend based on what makes them feel good, so your foremost concern should be to focus on the one-to-one experience in order to achieve your marketing goals.

Applause Entertainment’s Experiential Marketing – Hampton Park Shopping Centre Case Study

Here’s an example of when Applause Entertainment helped Hampton Park Shopping Centre during Easter. They wanted to give their shoppers a special treat during the Easter school break, but also place the shopping centre “on the map” as the place for local families to shop. Have a watch: The marketing strategy had two parts: to create an experience for local shoppers that engaged and entertained, and then using this opportunity to create a video that will gain traction on social media in order to reach a wider audience. In order to facilitate the creation of a quality video most suitable for social media sharing, first we had to ensure that the experience itself was a success. We designed a unique and eye-catching installation to delight the locals, and the activity was interactive but accessible, meaning small children and adults alike were able to participate and engage with the entertainment.

Taking things to the Digital level

Our on-site videographers captured the candid and genuine joy elicited from the experience, and we collaborated with the videographers to produce a video for online publication and sharing. This video was carefully designed to reflect and amplify the marketing message for those who were not physically at the event itself. The video campaign broadened the main marketing message to a much wider audience and helped accelerate the conversation around this experience. The video received an accumulated 6k+ views on Facebook alone! The feedback was very positive – both from the locals and online. Applause Entertainment consulted on, and helped create and execute the entire experience (or “Eggsperience”) by taking on board not only the marketing goals, but also the demographic, the theme, the need for something unique, as well as many other factors that were revealed during the consultation process. The Hampton Park Shopping Centre case study is a great example of how a consultancy can help maximise the experiential marketing potential.

In Conclusion; how will you get ahead of Competitors?

As you prepare your experiential marketing campaign, reflect on the following questions: Who is my market? Where are they going to be? What is my marketing message? What is my brand message? How will those messages be conveyed? Why do we want to convey this message? Are there other creative ways this message can be conveyed? Our consultants will be collaborating with you to get those answers in order to help you deliver the most effective experiential entertainment for your marketing campaign.

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So you want to get ahead of competitors? Are you looking for more creative ideas and solutions for your event entertainment needs? Start exploring the website to get inspiration, or call 1300 261 545 and enquire about your next event! It’s time to build your event experience.