A look at the subject of experiential or engagement marketing. Especially, this article focuses on six principles that an experiential marketing agency should consider when formulating marketing campaigns.

Experiential marketing differs fundamentally from traditional marketing in that it utilises strategies that involve a target market, encouraging them to participate rather that purely bombarding them with marketing messages. This positive, rather than passive approach to marketing is what makes experiential marketing different; it has also made it particularly successful for branding exercises.

The greatest benefit to experiential marketing is that it works in two directions. Traditional advertising simply creates a one way discourse with potential clients, leading to little if any participation on the potential customer’s behalf. On the other hand, creating a brand experience that involves any potential clients actively creates and reinforces positive connotations with a company, subsequently leading to greater brand recognition and hopefully increased sales.

Furthermore, experiential marketing agencies typically work towards six specific principles that if followed should result in successful marketing campaigns. These principles have come about through an evolutionary process that has been the result of a clarification of best practices within a maturing industry.

The following goals are typically set out at the start of each campaign; any marketing ideas should fulfil each wholly to be considered valid.

• First and foremost it is vital that any campaign builds relationships with participants, moreover these relationships should be long lasting.
• Any campaign should have a predefined target audience, not just “the man of the street” but in accordance with specific customer profiling.
• The campaign should encourage people to interact with the product or brand.
• As a branding exercise it should increase the awareness of the brand. However it should not just purely increase awareness but create relative awareness amongst the predefined target audience.
• Ideally a campaign will improve customer loyalty to that brand by providing them with a sense of involvement.
• Finally, it should create long lasting, positive memories that will remind the customer of the brand when they are looking to purchase products in the company’s market.

The success of experiential marketing agencies is measured against how many of these goals. As previously stated however, it is important to include all of the considerations above when formulating marketing campaigns.