Event Marketing vs. Experiential Marketing

 

Experiential marketing and event marketing are often used interchangeably by people inside and outside of the industry, but are they the same?

The short answer? No, not quite.

They may sound similar, but experiential and event marketing are two separate tactics that brands can use as part of a larger marketing plan. What exactly is the difference between the two? It has to do with engagement, experience, goals, and time.

Engagement

One of the most prominent differences between experiential and event marketing is how each of these tactics engages the audience. Event marketing uses one-way communication where the brand is speaking directly to the consumer, but the consumer does not have the opportunity to respond. Have you ever attended an event where you passed by multiple booths and were handed marketing brochures about a company? This is a form of one-way communication that is often used at events. The brand is passing along information to the attendee in the form of a promotional pamphlet, but the consumer is not an active participant in the conversation.

On the other hand, experiential marketing uses two-way communication. This allows a brand to interact with a customer to teach them more about the brand’s products and services, and then listen to what the customer has to say in response. Experiential marketers aim to create opportunities where the customer and the brand can come together to engage in conversation and form a strong relationship. For example, Sensodyne hosted an experiential marketing event that invited people with sensitive teeth to try new products, play games, and meet privately with a dentist. Each section of the event was staffed with knowledgeable professionals who were there to interact with guests on a personal level. Although Sensodyne did host an event, this is definitely an example of experiential marketing and not event marketing.

Experience

Guests also experience both event marketing and experiential marketing in different ways. Think of the last time you went to a concert. You and the thousands of other music fans that filled the arena simultaneously watched the same show and left after having the same experience. This is the typical experience people have when it comes to event marketing—all at once, all the same.

However, every guest at an experiential marketing event will walk away with a unique memory of the individual experience they had. To understand this concept, consider Delta’s experiential marketing event known as “Stillness in Motion.” To highlight how Delta promotes rest and relaxation for its travellers, Delta created a spa-like room where guests could come in and try to find stillness on their own. The room was equipped with various sensors that picked up the guest’s heartbeat and changed the surroundings based on its pace. As the heartbeat picked up, the room would flash different colours and create various noises, and as users finally found their stillness, the colours would begin to fade and gentle music would seep into the room. In this example, each user had a unique experience that was powered by his or her heartbeat. This is part of the magic of the experiential marketing.

Goals

Event marketing and experiential marketing are used to achieve different goals, which is one of the reasons why it’s so important to understand the difference between the two. Marketers turn to event marketing when they want to announce a new product, sell products, or get press coverage for the brand. It’s best to think of event marketing as a way to generate buzz around something happening with the brand.

Of course, experiential marketing can also be used to launch new products, sell merchandise, and get in the press, but those aren’t typically the goals of these events. Instead, marketers use experiential marketing to create positive brand associations and grow relationships with their audience. An increase in sales and awareness of a new product can certainly occur as a result of an experiential marketing event, but the focus during the planning process is usually on how to connect with consumers. Going back to the Sensodyne example, inviting guests to meet privately with a dentist will not necessarily lead to an increase in sales. After all, the dentist was not secretly a sales representative who was pitching Sensodyne products. But, when guests left the event, they probably had a more favourable impression of Sensodyne for creating such a memorable experience for them. As a result of this positive association and the knowledge about sensitive teeth that the dentist provided, more customers probably did purchase Sensodyne toothpaste.

Time

Event marketing typically has a start and end time so guests know when to arrive and when the event is over. Once the end time has passed, the event is officially done. Press may cover the event while it is happening or immediately after it is over, but besides this, the buzz tends to die down when the event comes to an end.

Experiential marketing tends to live on much longer than event marketing. Because each guest has a unique experience at an experiential marketing event, guests often feel compelled to share their stories on social media and blogs. The buzz around an experiential marketing campaign can continue to grow as more guests swap stories and discuss the details of the event. Do you remember Coca Cola’s famous “Share A Coke” campaign? Part of the marketing plan for this campaign was hosting experiential marketing events and inviting guests to attend so they could create their own custom bottle of Coca Cola. After making their own bottles, many guests shared pictures of them online, which drew more attention to the campaign and the brand as a whole. If you want to keep the focus on your brand and really make your efforts pay off, choose experiential marketing.

 

Credit: Factory360

25 Tips for Creating Great Marketing Videos

In recent years, videos have been making inroads in digital marketing, emerging as a powerful promotional tool for businesses to promote their wares in an exciting and engaging way. Though when it comes to video marketing, there’s some pretty definitive ‘rules’ businesses should stick to in order to get their videos right. Get them wrong and marketing videos can be more hindering to a company than profiting.

Fortunately, if you’re a business looking to embark on an effective video marketing strategy, you’re in the right place, as Small Business Trends explores 25 tips for creating marketing videos.

Tips for Creating Marketing Videos

Tell a Story

Instead of being overtly salesy, an effective video tells a story. As the Digital Marketing Institute notes, businesses should utilize the emotive power of video by appealing to their customer’s needs and desires.

Make Sure the Introduction Stands Out

A little like how we are unlikely to click on an email if we’re not inspired by the subject line, an incredible one fifth of viewers click off a video within 10 seconds if they’re not interested in what they see. With this in mind, the introduction of the video is vitally important and should be made inspiring, entertaining and informative, to hook the viewer and encourage them to view the whole of the video.

Create a Stimulating Title

By the same token, your video’s title should be stimulating and eye-catching in order to grab a viewer’s attention. Furthermore, by using relevant keywords in a title, the video is likely to show up on the search engines when viewers search for the topic.

Focus on the Mission and Less on the Product

Instead of being overtly focused on the product and all its benefits, channel the message of the video into the mission of the product. Dove, for example, are hailed are being experts in creating emotional viral videos that focus less on their product and more on their mission.

Don’t Be Boring

Who wants to watch a boring video? It goes without saying, if you want your business’s video marketing campaign to be successful, create exciting and inspiring videos that can never be considered boring.

Get a Little Bit Risqué!

While too much naughty content is unlikely to do the credibility of your business many favors, as Inc. writes, just the right amount can be good for page views — as long as not overdone.

Make it Mobile Friendly

With more and more people using mobile devices to get online, it’s imperative corporate videos are mobile friendly. In fact, according to YouTube, mobile video consumption increases 100% every year! Marketing videos therefore need to be able to be downloaded and enjoyed on mobile devices.

Think About SEO

Quite simply, Google loves video content and an effective video marketing campaign should have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. To ensure maximum SEO value from your videos, accompany the video with a well-written description that is tagged with relevant keywords to help boost the video’s SEO.

Include Your URL in the Video

Displaying your website address in a marketing video is a good way for companies to get exposure and generate traffic to their website through a video.

Educate Your Audience

As the Digital Marketing Institute informs, one of the most powerful ways to implement effective video marketing is to educate viewers. Often videos that offer advice, information, tips and other informative content can be more effective than a solely promotional video.

Make the Video More Atmospheric with Music

Music is a powerful tool on video content, evoking a myriad of emotions. Don’t be afraid to use music in your video that fits the mood of the message and crafts a more exciting and emotive video.

Use Video Content Generated by Customers

Putting your customers behind the camera to talk about how they have used and benefited from your product, can be a powerful way to engage viewers and appeal to prospective customers.

Include a Call to Action

Similar to how all blog posts and content should have a call to action at the end, which invites the reader to take further action, such as signing up to a newsletter, or visiting a website, so too should a marketing video. Ask yourself, what do you want viewers to do when they’ve watched the video and then encourage them to do so without being overtly salesy.

Take Viewers Behind the Scenes

Consumers love to get up close to a brand and video marketing offers the perfect opportunity to take customers behind the scenes and into your business’s ‘natural surroundings.’

Include Tutorial Videos

Posting tutorials that are relevant to your niche is a great way to connect and engage with customers. Tutorials shouldn’t give away all your industry secrets, but should be enough to entice the viewer with informative and useful content, leaving them wanting to learn more.

Keep Them Short

Online viewers often don’t have much time to spare before they’re off looking on a new site and at a new video. In this sense, shorter marketing videos can tend to work better than long ones. As Helen Klein Ross told Kiss Metrics:

“The less you say, the more likely people are to remember.”

Use a Professional Voice

Words spoken with clarity and professionalism will always come out better in a corporate video than an amateur speaker, whose lack of experience speaking on the camera is obvious. With this in mind, it might be a good idea to have an employee that is experienced on speaking in front of the camera record for the video, or even think about calling in a professional.

Use Micro-Video Apps

Along with all this talk of keeping videos short for  the viewer, it’s also true shorter content is a better format for most social platforms. As Forbes notes, short, concise content triumphs over longer forms of content, particularly on social media channels. Video marketers should consider using micro-video apps, which shorten videos to less than 10 seconds, so they’re ideal of sharing on the likes of Instagram and Twitter.

Pose Questions

Strive to create engagement and conversation with your video by asking viewers questions. Ask viewers to leave answers to the questions in a comment section below the video.

Don’t Be Preoccupied with Perfection

Videos for marketing purposes aren’t Hollywood movies and nobody expects perfection. Whilst you want the video to look professional, don’t become too obsessed with perfection that on the 50th take you still haven’t got in right.

But Don’t Forget Production Quality

That said, it’s important a marketing video is produced professionally. From the camera work to lighting, edited to voice overs, it might be a good idea to call upon the expertise of a professional video production company to ensure the video is produced in a high quality.

Use Videos to Help You Create Your Own Effective Video Marketing Strategy

Head to the likes of YouTube to see how businesses are already building videos that have managed to go viral. Featuring the likes of Coca-Cola, these ‘10 Epic Viral Marketing Videos’ on YouTube will give you some pointers on how some of the biggest and well-known brands are producing a video designed to go viral.

Build Hype Around the Launch of the Video

Instead of just going ahead and launching your video, build hype around the video by promoting its launch date on your website, blog and social media channels.

Provide Some Humor

Not all corporate videos need to be serious. On the contrary, some humour can work well in generating more interest in your video. Vidyard gives an example of a humorous marketing video that proved hugely successful — a parody by cloud invoicing provider Taulia of the award-winning commercial series ‘Get Rid of Cable’ by Direct TV. As Vidyard writes:

“The video not only delivers a laugh, but this kind of humorous take on B2B solution can really get your customers feeling connected with your brand and help you stand out in what can be a stuffy market.”

Embed a Video in Landing Pages

Think strategically about where you are going to place your marketing video. Statistics show that embedding videos in landing pages can raise conversion rates by as much as 80 percent.

With video forecast to claim more than 80 percent of all web traffic by 2019 and 90 percent of customers reporting that product videos help them make purchasing decisions, it is imperative companies create videos that resonate with their audience and ultimately help sell their services and products.

Culled from Small Biz Trends