With so many brands trying to get customers attention many companies have started to participate in Experimental marketing. Brands are trying to get around people using ad blockers, no-commercial entertainment, and social media ads by creating situations that create direct connections and relationships with their customers. But, what is experimental marketing and how do you do it!?
Ideally, a customers interaction with experimental marketing would look a little like this: They’d interact with a brand experience, be amazed and love it so much that they would post it on social media and tell all their friends, tag the company and join a mailing list for special offers, purchase your product.
This would be amazing right and totally make sense why marketers are starting to shift from traditional marketing to experimental. Plus so much creativity… who doesn’t love that!
“There’s a consensus among marketers that brand experience builds loyalty.” -Freeman CMO Chris Cavanaugh so take advantage of creating interactive scenarios with your customers. That way you give them a first-person opportunity to experience your product for themselves and, in turn, trust your brand more and are more likely to buy products from you and tell their friends!
Take M&M and their recent unveiling of their caramel flavor in times square. By bringing back their traditional caramel flavor, they also brought people back to memories with old-school arcade games. People held up their phones in Times Square and were instantly transported into a vintage arcade. Everyone was buzzing about the brand turning something as iconic as Times Square in New York into an interactive arcade and not only did they have thousands of people flocking to try the augmented reality arcade but you had all of their friends posting about how cool the experience was. Talk about a great experimental marketing campaign.
M&M’s campaign is just one example of so many that are trying to create a more interactive experience for their customers.
Social Media has become one of the most effective tools for marketing and by receiving organic social traffic from a loyal followers base is the ultimate goal.
With a campaign like M&M’s it is easy to see the results. If they have a spike in sales, especially the caramel flavored ones, marketers can see the direct success of the campaign.
When brands are looking at measurement and data from experimental marketing many have moved from laid-back tracking where they hope that the experience was so cool for people that were there that they will post on their own to making sure they can track their interactions.
Social Media has made that easier as hashtags, goefilters, mentions and followers profiles have made it easier for a brand to guarantee that they will have the data to back up the expenses of the experiences
However, there is no set list of data that marketers are looking for. Metrics and statistics range and investing in this type of marketing can take a while to see the opportunity pay off. Marketers can take a look at the crowd at their experiences and see the overall reaction and have a pretty good idea of whether or not their campaign was a success.
Marketing isn’t something that is always measurable or something you can pull a guidebook out about. It is all about how people feel about your brand and what they say to their peers. By participating in experimental marketing you are striving to create a lasting impression on your customers about your brand that will transfer over to a sale not only by them but also by their network on social media.
Have you ran an experimental marketing campaign and been successful? Share it with us below… we would love to hear about it!