14 Ways to Use Experiential Marketing to Captivate Your Audience and Boost Your Brand

The marketing arena is more competitive than ever before. It’s now an absolute must for marketers to explore and diversify tactics to keep pace with the competition and continue growing.

Enter: experiential marketing!

While it may sound like a buzzword, experiential marketing is a powerful tool that will build deeper connections with your target audience. And delight them – which is key to grabbing (and holding) their attention.

Did you know that 74% of consumers say that participating or connecting with brands through experiential-type marketing makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted?

This is because, at its core, experiential marketing allows customers to experience brands in a way that is fun, memorable, and meaningful. The best thing about it: it can be used anywhere and in any industry. 

However, going into any new marketing activity blind isn’t the right approach. In fact, experiential marketing works best for those who make strategic, data-driven decisions to ensure their creative strategies actually yield results.

That’s where Similarweb can help, with its real-time, real-user data across all websites, channels, and industries. But, more on that later.

Whether you’re promoting an event, testing a new product, or educating customers about your brand, take inspiration from this list of 14 experiential marketing strategies (and why they work):

What is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is about creating memorable experiences for customers, focusing on getting them to actually interact with a brand, product, or service. It involves active participation in activities or events that are immersive, interactive, and engage the senses. It aims to get customers to have fun physically experiencing your product and ‘wow’ them in the process.

Increasingly popular types of experiential marketing include virtual reality experiences, interactive landing pages, hands-on product demonstrations, and pop-up events that allow potential (and existing) customers to handle and engage with the product or service.

What are the benefits of experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing has been proven to forge a deeper emotional connection, increase brand loyalty and create more buzz around a business. These, in turn, result in more conversions and sales – the true goal of experiential marketing.

Other great benefits of experiential marketing include:

• Building trust with your customers through personalized experiences
• Building customer loyalty through value-added services
• Maintaining a competitive advantage by capturing more customers
• Growing the customer base by increasing customer retention rates
• Encouraging more brand awareness via word-of-mouth

Firsthand experience lends more trust and credibility than other traditional forms of advertising, helping businesses to stand out in a crowded or saturated industry.

Top Tip: Experiential marketing can also be a great way to gather valuable data and insights about your target audience. Track their interactions and feedback during an experiential marketing event and gain valuable insights into what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t. Use it to inform future marketing strategies and make more data-driven decisions.

How to plan an experiential marketing campaign

To make the most of any weapon in your toolkit, you first have to learn how to wield it. ⚔️

• Define your target audience

Who are you trying to reach? You need to know as much as possible about who your potential customers are and what their behaviors are to understand what motivates them to take action.

You can use market research tools like SimilarWeb to gather demographic data. Identify the most relevant groups within your target audience (e.g., millennials or Gen-X) and then narrow down to a specific subgroup within that group (e.g., gamers).

Similarweb can then help you identify the most popular gaming platforms, forums, and social media groups for this group.

Armed with this knowledge, you can act quickly on the latest trends and information to create an experiential marketing campaign that speaks directly to this subgroup, rather than broadcasting a generic message across all social media platforms.

• Gauge demand and trends

It’s vital to validate demand for the experience you’re planning, to make sure it’s something that people are actively seeking out.

The best way to pick up on trends is to dig deeper into the search terms and queries real users are making.

For example, using Similarweb’s Keyword Generator to capture the buzz around the topic of ‘augmented reality’, a popular type of experiential marketing:

Here you can see that, just in the last 28 days (shout out to the freshness of this data!), people are searching for augmented reality in libraries, art, on podcasts and even in safety training. Get even more granular and specific with the keywords to uncover a treasure trove of insights to indicate what your audience really wants to experience.

• Get a benchmark for performance

Looking into what your competitors are doing, or organizations that are already doing what you want to do in this space, can set a benchmark of what success looks like. Key indicators of success are things like traffic to a page, and engagement metrics.

• Set specific goals

Set some goals and priorities for the campaign such as traffic, conversion, sales engagement etc. Think about how different experiences will help achieve them — that way, when planning out an experience, you’re already thinking about how it fits into the bigger picture of what you want from it (and vice versa).

14 experiential marketing examples

No matter what type of business or industry you work in, or what your goals are, this article has you covered. At least one of these experiential marketing examples will be the right fit for your brand.

From interactive installations to pop-up shops, let’s explore some examples of experiential marketing that are sure to grab your target audience’s attention and leave a lasting impact.

1. Event marketing

Events are highly effective ways to introduce new products and services, increase brand awareness and establish great relationships with customers. Even better when you can impress them with some cool in-person experience.

Take BrightonSEO as an example. With their widely anticipated events each year, you can actually see (below) the distinct spikes in traffic to their website when each event takes place. Track your own and competitors’ events in Similarweb’s website analysis platform to really see the impact events can have.

Key pointers for event marketing:

• Conduct sufficient research on your audience’s needs and preferences before planning an event
• Make your event stand out from the rest by including an ‘a-ha!’ factor (so they’ll remember you!)
• Use social media to create event-based hashtags and generate buzz

2. Immersive experiences

Immersive experiences can engage and captivate your audience in a way that any traditional marketing method would struggle to compete with. These types of experiences really stimulate the senses and emotions, giving that elusive ‘wow’ factor and connecting with your audience in a meaningful way.

Immersive experiences combine digital and physical elements to help you create a truly unique experience, tailored to your brand, for your customers or employees to enjoy.

If you want to fully immerse a customer, it’s best to use virtual or augmented reality technology. This is super effective because it allows you to transport them into a real-life scenario or environment where they can interact with the brand on their own terms.

Quite a few companies have used this strategy to connect with consumers through virtual reality technology: Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR to name a few. Some pioneering brands have even built entire worlds around their brands. Nike’s Metaverse store is a great example of this.

Here you can see the web traffic spike in November 2021 when Nike’s metaverse was open for a month until December.

Key pointers for immersive experiences:

• Make any experience highly relevant to your brand and messaging by creating your ideal customer profile.
• Engage all the senses to create a truly multi-dimensional experience
• Create moments that will encourage users to share their experiences on social media – use a specific hashtag for this

3. Guerrilla marketing

Guerrilla marketing is about using low-cost but unconventional tactics to reach customers at their level. Things like flash mobs and surprise pop-up events that create serious buzz and get people talking.

These are great tactics for businesses with smaller budgets that are looking to gain an edge over larger competitors by reaching out directly to customers in their area.

Guerilla marketing can be particularly effective for SaaS companies, helping to build awareness and generate leads. Here are some top guerilla marketing tips:

1. Use street art to surprise and delight your customers. This could involve using pre-approved graffiti art, stencils, or chalk to highlight your logo, a social media hashtag, QR code or to turn local areas into unique brand touchpoints
2. Create a branded game that will help hold your target audience’s attention for longer periods of time. Gamification also gives them a sense of achievement or a reward, which is proven to increase engagement. The game can be hosted on your website, social media pages or on an app. Keep updating and adding to it to ensure a longer-lasting impact.

Key pointers for guerilla marketing:

• Be creative, disruptive, and think outside the box
• Guerilla marketing can be a little risky so make sure you know your audience inside-out
• Make it share-worthy and promote the channels for your audiences to do so

4. Street teams

Like product placement, street teams involve brands paying people to be their ambassadors and go out into the community to spread their message.

They may hand out flyers, samples, or prizes, and can also collect consumer data to help the brand better understand its target market. Street teams can also be used for interviews with local media outlets as well.

Key pointers for street teams:

• Choose the locations where your target audience is most likely to be
• Encourage your street team to engage with people in a friendly and authentic way
• Provide incentives such as a discount code or free sample of your product
• Data points collected offline should be added to CRMs over the competition.

5. Product demonstrations

Let’s get back to basics here. Product demonstrations are a great way to show off your product and get people excited about it. The goal is to get customers to experience your product, understand it, and be convinced to buy it.

Product demonstrations are seen mostly at trade shows or in stores, but they can also be done online. The key is to keep it short — allowing just enough time for the customer to experience the product and its benefits — but also interactive so the customer can ask any questions to a present brand representative for quick resolutions.

If you’re not able to host your demonstration in person, consider using video or virtual reality (VR) technology to make it more immersive and interactive. Bonus points!

This type of experiential marketing can be used for a large number of different products, but it works especially well for SaaS companies because there is no need to demonstrate a physical product.

Key pointers for product demonstrations:

• Don’t just show off your product, make the experience interactive for your audience
• Provide real value in the form of education or entertainment
• Tailor the demo to the specific needs and interests of target audience

6. Pop-up shops

Pop-ups are typically used to test a new product or service before it hits the market, with the goal to make people want to buy it after experiencing it in person. Pop-ups are also great at gauging interest in a product or service, which allows brands to test demand before launching it on their own website or app.

In 2019, Nike opened a pop-up shop in New York City to promote their latest running shoe, the Nike Joyride. The pop-up shop featured a range of interactive experiences, including a treadmill with custom animations, a “Sensory Room” that allowed customers to experience the shoe’s cushioning technology and a “Joyride Machine” that created personalized shoe recommendations based on a customer’s running style and preferences.

The pop-up shop was widely covered in the media and on social media, helping to drive awareness and sales for the Nike Joyride.

Key pointers for pop-up shops:

• Locate your pop-up shop in high-traffic areas for your target audience
• Include an immersive experience that allows customers to interact with your brand in a unique way
• Consider limiting the number of products available, like limited editions, to create a sense of exclusivity

7. Sampling campaigns

Who doesn’t love a free sample? Offering free products or services to customers lets you gauge how customers react when they’re given access to your product for free (or at lower prices than normal).

These samples can be emblazoned with your logo or graphics that represent your brand’s identity, and can be used promotionally as giveaways at events or on social media platforms like Instagram.

Popular brands that love to use sampling campaigns include Starbucks and Sephora. Both are known for promoting new products with free samples for customers, encouraging them to find their new favorites with each seasonal change.

Key pointers for sampling campaigns:

• Use demographic data and market research to identify the most relevant audience segments for sampling
• Link the experience to your brand through tokens, giveaways or emblazoning your logo
• Follow up with participants to get their honest feedback and use it to tailor your product or service and/or improve the customer experience

8. Brand activations

Brand activations happen when a brand partners with another organization, like a sports team. In this case, they work with the brand to create unique experiences for their fans based on what their team does or stands for.

This can work for many experiences like an escape room, scavenger hunt, games night or obstacle course. Even partnered music festivals or sporting events count.

At the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show, Google built a roller coaster ride to represent a day in the life of their AI-powered software, Google Assistant. The experience was designed using animatronics and left quite an impression on those who rode it.

Remember, the idea is to create a fun way for consumers to engage with the brand and its values.

Key pointers for brand activations:

• Find the right business to partner with, whose brand values align with yours
• This type of marketing works well for bigger budgets
• Use branded hashtags to spread the word

9. Social media activations

Social media activations are events that use social media to connect people and brands in new and interesting ways. They often feature a hashtag challenge, video competition, or even a scavenger hunt.

With these events, you would post content related to your product or service (like photos of the product being used) on your social media channels, as well as adding links to your website or landing pages in the captions of photos or videos you share.

A great example of this is Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign where they leverage user-generated content on their flagship iPhones to promote their products.

Key pointers for social media activations:

• Choose the right social media platform for your audience
• Encourage user-generated content to spread the word
• Offer a prize or incentive for participation

Top Tip: You can use Similarweb to track social traffic, evaluate social referrals and better understand how you are engaging with your brand on social media. This can help optimize your social media activation campaigns, leading to more effective engagement and better results.

Similarly, this look into the top referring domains can help identify key social media platforms, measure social reach and assess the quality of social media traffic. You might even spot an influential website/company/individual that you could partner up with.

10. Virtual Reality Campaigns

As previously touched upon, Virtual reality (VR) is a great example of experiential marketing earlier, so let’s dig a little deeper.

VR allows you to create an environment that people will want to (quite literally) be a part of and interact with in real-time.

VR experiences are so effective because they offer customers the opportunity to experience your brand, new products or services in ways they never have before on their own devices or through other types of media.

This could be something as simple as a virtual tour of a store or factory, or as complex as a fully interactive game or simulation.

For example, pharmaceutical giant, GSK used VR to simulate the experience of a migraine through their campaign, the Excedrin Migraine Experience. By simulating the visual symptoms, they educated their audience on just how difficult the condition can be and why medication can be the right solution for it.

Key Takeaways

• While VR experiences are exciting, it’s important to keep them relatively straightforward and user-friendly
• Take the chance to stand out from the crowd by providing a unique perspective
• Make it shareable on social media or create your own video campaign for it

Use Similarweb for insights into what is getting people excited in the world of VR. For example, below ‘virtual reality’ has been entered into the Keyword Generator, and then ‘Trending Keywords’ selected. Instantly it’s obvious that people are pretty keen on ‘virtual reality games’ and metaverse-type experiences. How can you use these insights when planning which VR experience to offer?

11. Augmented reality apps

Augmented reality (AR), much like VR, is a cutting-edge technology that projects a computer-generated image into the real world view through a mobile phone camera or other integrated device. It’s a type of mixed reality that blends virtual objects with the physical world and the real world with the virtual world, bringing them together in what is seen as a new and exciting way.

Augmented experiences are best suited to products such as branded clothing and accessories, digital content such as branded videos or games, or physical items such as branded T-shirts.

For example, augmented reality can be used to show how furniture might look in a living room, or clothing on a person. IKEA Place is a great example of AR in action.

Key Takeaways

• Keep it simple and focused on the key message or product you want to promote
• Tailor the AR experience to fit the context and make it super relevant to the audience

12. Interactive billboards

Interactive billboards are another great example of experiential marketing where brands pay for digital billboards that allow people to interact with them via video chats, gamification, gesture recognition and more.

When a customer passes an interactive billboard, they can click on it and answer questions, play a short game or watch a video about it. This could be executed through a touchscreen display or syncing/integrating with their mobile devices or social media.

The idea here is that digital billboards will influence mobile traffic, increasing brand awareness among potential customers.

Key pointers for interactive billboards:

• Keep it simple and user-friendly; avoid complex interfaces or confusing CTAs
• Make sure your visuals and messaging are attention-grabbing and engaging
• Make sure to track and analyze engagement rates, impressions and other metrics to refine your strategy and improve future campaigns

Pro Tip: Nano/micro brand ambassadors catch a lot more attention and aren’t difficult to find today.

13. Brand experience centers

Brand experience centers are permanent spaces where customers go to learn more about a brand, try products, and participate in interactive experiences. You’ll find them in malls, airports, hotels or other public spaces, like parks. They can also have their own dedicated, standalone locations.

Brand experience centers are especially popular within the tech space. For example, electronics giant, Samsung, is known for using this tactic to invite customers to play and experiment with its products.

One of Samsung’s flagship experience centers is located in New York City, called Samsung 837.

Source: Samsung

The center has multiple floors that feature cool interactive displays, including a virtual reality experience, a home theater display and a smart kitchen display. It also hosts events and workshops that showcase Samsung’s latest products and technologies.

Key Takeaways

• Generate buzz about the center beyond its physical location by promoting with ads and social media
• Make the experience a memorable one by integrating tech and interactive elements
• Get on-spot feedback from visitors to refine your marketing strategy

Pro Tip: Reputation management can showcase the trust others have in your product/service

14. Cause marketing (and charity events)

Cause marketing, including holding charity events, is a tried and tested way to raise brand awareness and funds for a specific cause, which simultaneously promotes brand values and social responsibility.

This type of experiential marketing is usually done through partnerships with non-profits or charities, but you can also create campaigns around specific causes that you want to support (for example, the ALS Association). Or, if it’s an event, there are endless options, from a walk-a-thon or marathon to a silent auction.

Cause marketing can be done through social media by offering discounts on environmentally-friendly products or sharing interesting stories about your company’s mission or values with your followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

For example, Salesforce uses charity in its experiential marketing campaigns through its “1-1-1” model, which is a pledge to donate 1% of its equity, product, and time to charitable causes.

This model has led to the creation of the Pledge 1% movement, which supports a movement of building a mindset around corporate philanthropy and social initiatives around the world.

Key pointers for cause marketing:

• Choose a cause that aligns with your brand values to create a stronger connection
• Create a tangible experience for attendees that demonstrates the impact of their involvement
• Integrate your brand values so a charity event goes beyond just one day
• Consider including educational activities that both inform and entertain your audience
• Create lasting partnerships with charities

It’s time to get experiential

As consumers continue to crave more authentic and immersive experiences, this is your sign to start prioritizing experiential marketing strategies to make more meaningful connections with your audience.

With the right approach (and a little data-driven help from Similarweb) you can create experiences that not only engage and entertain but also drive real business results.

FAQs

What is the definition of experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is a strategic approach that goes beyond traditional advertising and focuses on creating interactive and immersive experiences for customers. Instead of passively consuming marketing messages, customers actively participate in the brand’s story, products, or services. These experiences aim to elicit emotions, engage the senses, and leave a lasting impression, ultimately forging stronger connections between the brand and target audience.

What are the benefits of experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing provides memorable and enjoyable experiences, helping brands to build stronger emotional connections with customers, leading to increased brand loyalty and advocacy. Engaging experiences also tend to generate word-of-mouth buzz, sparking conversations about the brand on social media and among friends and family. Additionally, experiential marketing allows businesses to gather valuable data and insights into customer preferences and behaviors, enabling better-targeted future marketing strategies.

What are examples of experiential marketing?

Some of the best examples of experiential marketing include immersive experiences like virtual reality and augmented reality, guerrilla marketing, pop-up shops, and social media activations. These strategies engage customers, create memorable interactions, and foster stronger connections with brands.

Can experiential marketing work for any business or industry?

Yes, experiential marketing can be tailored to suit any industry and businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a small startup or a multinational corporation, the focus on creating meaningful experiences can be applied to various products and services. From retail and technology to hospitality and healthcare, experiential marketing can help brands stand out and engage their target audience effectively.