In an exceptionally crowded market place, brands are being forced to employ increasingly more creative tactics to grab the attention of the discerning consumer.
Gone are the days of just handing out products and expecting to win over new customers. Today, brands have to create theatre in order to entice people’s attention while remaining mindful that consumers are becoming increasingly aware of and desensitised to marketing ploys.
Add to this budgets continuing to wane and brands not always wanting to appear too ostentatious, and marketers face a real challenge, having to be exceptionally shrewd in order to strike a fair balance and create effective experiential.
In the current climate, the key is to create advocates that will do your job for you.
Word of mouth is crucially effective and is what marketers should aspire to achieve. It is little wonder, then, that marketers are turning to ‘today’s youth’. This group buy into brands and, through speaking to their peers (particularly via online social media channels), can make or break a brand.
Without this sharing, then, experiential as a tool will very likely not be part of the future marketing mix.
‘Youth’ is a vital market; they have their own money to spend and can have a significant influence on family expenditure. That’s why this age group is an extremely important target for marketers.
However, this group can be easily influenced and there are numerous ethical arguments against marketing to them, particularly to the youngest age range. Yet, due to the influence such youngsters wield within the family, brands are doing more to reach out to this particular set.
Experiential should definitely be seen as part of the future of marketing and is very relevant when performed well: however, going forwards, marketers need to ensure they are doing it for the right reasons.
If it is performed without real strategic planning then it becomes completely irrelevant. On a basic level, for example, one ambassador chatting to consumers hits 20 consumers an hour. Even if this is done for five hours, still only 100 consumers will be reached; there will be no volume or scale – that’s why building word of mouth among the youth set is such an attractive and effective route.
But with marketing regulation becoming increasingly tight, marketers need to ensure they are not exploiting this younger demographic, but instead fairly engaging with them, so that they can make their own informed decisions.
If regulations on marketing to youth are adhered to, then there is no reason why experiential cannot be used to bring this powerful, digitally savvy group on side. And if it can do that successfully, then it will remain an integral part of the future of the marketing mix.