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Post Link: Experiential Marketing: 4 Ways to Wow Crowds at Your Next Event Experiential Marketing: 4 Ways to Wow Crowds at Your Next Event As wholesale brands seek ways to expand audiences at trade shows and elsewhere, one tactic worth considering is experiential marketing. Experiential marketing can be defined loosely as messaging you can touch, feel, or view in a physical space. If this sounds like an idea you’ve heard before, you’re right: experiential marketing has been around for years under a variety of different names, including: Event Marketing Guerrilla Marketing Live Marketing On-Ground Marketing Participation Marketing Whatever you decide to call it, the concept behind experiential marketing is to create a marketing initiative that invites your audience to participate and experience your products or services in a memorable way. Why Experience Matters

Experiential Marketing at Events & Trade Shows

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Page 1: Experiential Marketing at Events & Trade Shows

Post Link: Experiential Marketing: 4 Ways to Wow Crowds at Your Next Event

Experiential Marketing: 4 Ways to Wow Crowds at Your NextEvent

As wholesale brands seek ways to expand audiences at trade shows and elsewhere, one tacticworth considering is experiential marketing.

Experiential marketing can be defined loosely as messaging you can touch, feel, or view in aphysical space. If this sounds like an idea you’ve heard before, you’re right: experientialmarketing has been around for years under a variety of different names, including:

Event Marketing●

Guerrilla Marketing●

Live Marketing●

On-Ground Marketing●

Participation Marketing●

Whatever you decide to call it, the concept behind experiential marketing is to create amarketing initiative that invites your audience to participate and experience your products orservices in a memorable way.

Why Experience Matters

Page 2: Experiential Marketing at Events & Trade Shows

If experiential marketing is nothing new, why is it now growing so quickly and garnering somuch attention in marketing circles? One reason is the advent of social media. As brandsexpand their social media reach, the opportunity to expand their experiential marketing effortsbeyond in-person interactions is much greater.

Experiential marketing also allows brands to earn media coverage and PR that they otherwisemight not. After all, informing the press that your brand intends to attend a particular tradeshowis not, in and of itself, particularly newsworthy.

But if your brand is hosting an event in your booth or elsewhere that invites attendees toparticipate in a new or unusual way? It may be newsworthy enough to interest media outletscovering the event.

How To Create Memorable Experiences

Show, Don’t Tell.

One of the biggest benefits of trade shows has always been that they provide an opportunity tosee and feel a brand’s products. The simplest type of experiential marketing is simply to allowyour audience to try the product for themselves. This is basically a demo, but you’ll want to takethings further.

If you’re demoing a food product, think of a creative – even crazy – way to get those productsout to the show attendees. If you’re a fashion brand, rather than simply showing samples in thebooth, host a small fashion show with models and a runway. The possibilities are endless.

Leverage Social and Earned Media.

As you’re planning your experiential campaign, consider how well your ideas will translate toshareable videos and images. This is one of the major benefits of experiential marketing – it isnot only an effective way to reach your target audience at an event, but should also provide anopportunity to reach out to people who were not in attendance.

Use event and any brand hashtags on all social media postings to increase your follower base.You can also create a hashtag for your campaign so people can follow along.

Don’t Limit Yourself to the Booth.

Often, when we think about trade show marketing, people limit themselves to thinking “insidethe box,” or in this case, the booth. Yet, because your brand will be competing with hundreds oreven thousands of other vendors, it can be very difficult to stand out on the trade show floor.

There may also be rules to consider that govern what you can or cannot do within the event hallitself. So consider other options. Your event presence isn’t limited to the booth; you can alsohost outside events or parties in the area surrounding the event hall.

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Don’t Forget Sales.

Ultimately, the goal of marketing is to feed leads to your company’s sales team. One way tomake your experiential marketing campaigns more accountable is to combine the experienceitself with lead generating activity.

Don’t forget to ask for those email addresses. Even better, you can create a landing pagewhere people can continue their experience with your brand by signing up to see exclusivecontent and connect with your brand on social media.

Any of these tactics will provide a means of developing a relationship with potential customersthat could ultimately lead to more sales.

Some Ideas to Consider

If you’re looking for specific ways to engage attendees at your next trade show, here are someexperiential marketing tactics to consider.

1. Charging stations and photo booths

These are two ideas that you can easily leverage to get people to spend time and engage atyour booth. It’s something that nearly any company can pull off, and they provide opportunitiesto engage with prospects.

2. Contests and games

Contests and games are a great way to combine experiential marketing with lead generation.This type of activity can be especially effective when you incorporate experiences with yourproduct as part of the campaign.

3. Demos

Product demos are nothing new but for many brands, demos are a must. If you want to make itmemorable, find a way to make your demo stand out from the ordinary.

4. Multimedia

If your product doesn’t demo well, multimedia presentations shown on a tablet or flat-screen TVin the booth are another way to engage. Think videos of the product in action, customertestimonials, music, and other exciting content.

Just remember to keep it relatively short (two to five minutes, not twenty!) also keep in mind thatyou can reuse this content and share it on your website or social media sites to expand yourreach.

Experiential marketing is a great opportunity to showcase the creative and fun side of yourbrand, and the methods you can use to achieve it are really only limited to your imagination.

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So as you’re planning your experiential marketing for your next trade show or event, think ofways to make engaging with your brand fun and stand out from the crowd.

Have you had success creating an experiential marketing campaign? We’d love to hear whatworked and what didn’t. Let us know in the comments.Post originally located at: https://www.handshake.com/blog/experiential-marketing/

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