New York event planners know the inherent value of curating experiential events for their clients. And you likely have a few experiential events on your calendar this year, too, considering how popular these types of engagements have become in recent months. More and more brands are turning to these types of events to create lasting and memorable experiences with their customers. And as a planning professional, there are a few things to know to ensure you capitalize on experiential event marketing and planning for your business and ideas to inspire your most creative experiential planning amenities.
1. Why Experiential Events Are So Popular
Experiential events and experiential marketing are both methods for directly engaging with customers. Also referred to as live marketing, participation marketing, or engagement marketing, experiential marketing gets creative with memorable interactions. And experiential event marketing is growing in popularity for a number of reasons.
Forbes says experiential marketing can significantly boost the lasting connections between brands and customers. And it’s a viable way for companies to collect data about their target audiences, which is a must-have for improving marketing and advertising strategies.
Because today’s marketing landscape is noisy with messaging, videos, and endless scrolling, it’s harder for marketers to make an impact. But experiential events and experiential marketing are charting a path through the clutter by creating customizable, interactive experiences. Event planners can be capitalizing on this trend and land more brand clients who need help curating these experiential experiences.
2. Understanding the Pillars of Experiential Event Marketing
As a New York event planner who’s looking to grow a business, experiential events are a great opportunity to do so. But you’ll need to master the experiential event marketing aspect. And with each new brand client you bring in, you’ll want to develop a marketing plan that includes the 11 pillars of experiential marketing for events.
Exceptional - Every experiential event and its marketing campaigns should be exceptional, over-the-top exciting, and innovative.
Memorable - Every experience should be memorable, creating an undeniable bond between the products or services and the customer.
Shareable - Experiential event marketing and the events themselves must be share-worthy to capitalize on the opportunities for virality.
Relatable - The experience and marketing campaigns supporting the event should be relatable and identifiable for a precise target audience.
Relevant - Experiential marketing and events need to solve a relevant problem or pain point for the target audience.
Personal - Every experiential event should feel personal and customized to the target audience.
Adaptable - A great experiential marketing campaign and event will be flexible and adaptable in nature to accommodate new prospects, new environments, and new challenges.
Engaging - Customers and event guests should be inspired to engage, prompted to participate, and eager to learn more.
Credible - Avoid gimmicks and stick to credible and reputable creative methods for marketing and events.
Targetable - Don’t make each event or campaign so broad-stroked that it misses your target audience. Niche works best.
Connectable - Make it easy for customers and participants to connect with the brand and core offerings.
3. Advantages of Experiential Event Marketing
New York event planners can take the success of past experiential events and marketing to use as a platform for landing new experiential event clients. And as you create your presentations and proposal, be sure to highlight the many advantages a company might expect from hosting and planning one of these experiential events with you.
Remember…
- Experiential events attract customers to brands.
- Experiential events boost brand loyalty.
- Experiential events drive growing awareness for products and services.
- Experiential events elevate brand perceptions.
- Experiential events generate immediate leads.
- Experiential events drive sales and conversions.
4. Experiential Event Marketing Examples for Inspiration
Get inspired for new experiential events and marketing strategies with these examples of brilliant experiences.
Lean Cuisine’s “WeighThis” Campaign
Healthy food giant, Lean Cuisine, set up shop in New York’s Grand Central Station for a unique experiential experience. There, they created a gallery of scales, prompting women to “weigh in.” Except instead of weight, Lean Cuisine asked women to write down how they’d prefer to be measured, drawing value to anything other than weight metrics. The event prompted passers-by to stop and spectate. And seeing the reactions of women, tallying their “weigh-ins” based on deeper values (and not weight,) more people stepped up to participate.
Lululemon’s “Proud & Present” Campaign
The popular athletic brand, Lululemon, wanted to contribute to Pride Month in a more meaningful way. So, the company turned inward and surveyed its own staff and brand ambassadors, asking about their thoughts and sentiments about supporting the LGBTQ+ community. Lululemon took those inspirational responses and established an art installation at Hudson River Park. This exhibit remained on display for two weeks and encouraged interactions with physical representations of the employees’ reflections. Piggybacking on the art gallery, Lululemon also hosted community yoga, raising money for The Trevor Project.
Vans’ “House of Vans” Campaign
Vans, the wildly popular athletic shoe with a huge following from the skateboarding community, took to skateparks across major metropolitan areas, including Chicago and New York City. There, the brand featured pop-ups promoting the latest line of shoes that honored David Bowie. These pop-ups put new Vans on display directly in front of the core target audience, making it a brilliant experiential pop-up event and experiential marketing campaign.
5. Learn More By Attending the Event Planner Expo 2023
If you’re looking to grow your event planning business to include more experiential events, you can learn from the best of the best at The Event Planner Expo 2023! It’s the #1 events industry conference that draws in thousands of top pros in the events, hospitality, and marketing industries. And every year, New York event planners like you spend three full days in this high-energy networking environment taking away brilliant new ideas, business-boosting advice, and new client leads. Make experiential events and marketing a cornerstone of your business growth! And get tickets to The Expo to discover innovative ways to make it work for you! Make 2023 your best event planning year yet!
