Advertising Week New York is quickly upon us and I thought it was only right to think about brands and experiential marketing where there are massive opportunities for growth but also strategic positioning.
When it comes to events and marketing, the biggest challenge many businesses face isn’t coming up with a creative campaign or an experiential event.
In fact; this is far from the hard part.
With advancements in technology, sources of inspiration coming from all sorts of places; generating ideas for your campaign or event can actually be fun. Yet, the real challenge begins when you are asked to look at measuring how successful it was.
Measuring the Return On Investment (ROI) of your Facebook advertising or pay per click campaign can be relatively easy in comparison. You can simply check your Google Analytics, compare your website visits, ad clicks, revenue and website rankings in comparison to the last month or previous periods. You are then presented with colourful graphs which clearly shows how your adverts are performing. You are given a clear measure of success rather than a clear as mud justification.
With an improved understanding of brand experiences and smarter measurement around them, we can all come to a place where we have more effective campaigns and greater buy-in from even the sceptics. To do that, we must rethink our definition of experiential though and how we measure it..
Redefining “brand experience”
Consumer expectations are higher than ever before, and multi-channel journeys are becoming increasingly complex especially when you think about the various touch-points available to them.
In order for experiential marketing measurement to be robust, we need to look at it through a particular lens. One which enables us to connect the dots between not just what happens physically, such as in-store, event or activation. But one which looks at a consumers journey after they have experienced the product. A consumer might begin with research online and then seek out a physical experience and interaction to truly experience a brand or product.
Others might see a new product in a store or at an event, then immediately go online to look at reviews and prices, then return to the store to buy the product if they can’t wait a few days. Either way, the physical environment remains an important part of the buying process, with the close relationship between digital research and physical experiences becoming the norm. By understanding a clear definition of the term “brand experience” we can then see how to measure it.
Focusing on numbers will only hold your brand back from the chasing pack
With so much data at your fingertips, it can be difficult to know where to start. Which relevant metrics can provide you with the answer that you were looking for.
Is by only counting the number of visitors that you see at your event the right way to measure success?
Should you only be counting the number of individuals who attend your activation and talk to your brand ambassadors?
Measuring the number of individuals that attend your event experience can tell you how busy it was, but does it tell you:
- How long visitors were aware of my brand?
- How effective are your brand ambassadors at converting passing footfall?
- Which areas of your activation or event attract the most interest?
- Which are the most popular journey paths across my event?
- Of the people that visited the experience, how many then visited the brick and mortar store?
A well-rounded and holistic ROI strategy from your events will reflect both return on investment and return on experience.
Once you have your desired metrics then you can benchmark against other events
After one event using Meshh’s spatial analytics, you will have around 300,000 data points that are analysed to provide your desired metrics.
Just think what this could look like after 5 or 10 events?
Then think about how much data you would have collected after 6 months, operating 5 to 10 events per month?
Once you have completed events in many locations, you can then start to benchmark your events to understand which event had the highest dwell time and which brand ambassadors were the best at converting passing traffic. Then at Meshh, we can provide you with our own data-driven and robust benchmarks that have been taken from every single event we have analysed across the world, giving you a clear picture and comparison to understand how well you are doing.
By working with different benchmarks you are not only looking at ways of improving your events to get better, but you are adding some internal competition to your organisation as well. Everyone wants to be top of the table, and creating internal competition can help to elevate your team performance on the ground.
Changing the experiential marketing measurement model
How do we measure impact?
A consistent question asked by event and experiential managers.
…But how do we actually measure impact?
Whilst there is an abundance amount of tools out there to help you answer that question, there is actually too much if you do not have a predefined strategy. One that clearly sets out what you would like to measure. Then you can find a partner that can provide metrics to suit your strategy and one that can help you progress ahead of the chasing pack.
Your measurement model should go far beyond counting people to actually understanding what benefits your brand had from its experiential marketing.
When you have a pre-defined definition of brand experience, the metrics you wish to understand and relate to your vision and the benchmarks or industry you would like to compare yourself against. Then you will be able to choose a partner who can help you demonstrate your return on experience.
Want to hear more?
Jake Pryszlak, Meshh’s Research & Insight Manager will be hosting a panel session at Advertising Week New York with clients Justin Logerfo, Director of Analytics & Data Science at Momentum Worldwide and Nielsen’s VP of Entertainment Research, Kathy Lubner.
Jake will also be having a 1 to 1 chat with Anubhav Mehrotra from Live Nation all about how they use data to connect brands with fans!
Brand Experience plays a very important role
Thanks for sharing