Transformative experiential marketing – the biggest secret to keeping your customers coming back for more.

Think about the best book you’ve read or movie you’ve watched. Now think about what makes you stick with it or return time and time again? It’s likely that the experience of going on an emotional journey with the characters encapsulated you. In a world when the attention span of consumers in shorter than ever, brands recognise that experiential marketing and emotional storytelling can be the holy grail to set you apart from competitors.

Both are powerful tools that connect audiences to a brand through experience and inspire deeper loyalty.

Some brands rely on transformative experiential marketing to take consumers on a journey through their story, products, processes and values. By doing so, consumers leave with an emotional souvenir that can last a lifetime and more importantly, will drive sales.

What is transformative experiential marketing?

Transformative experiential marketing focuses on knowing exactly what will keep your customers coming back for more. Understanding how to get into the heart and mind of your customers to alter the way they think or feel is key.

Understanding transformative experiential marketing is one thing, but being able to apply it is another. If applying it was easy, every movie would be an award winner and every book would be a best seller.

Below we highlight the secrets to successful experiential marketing that matters to the audience.

Start with the audience

It’s all well and good knowing the age group of your target market along with their interests and expectations, but how much do you know about the deeper side of them?

You need to understand their hopes, dreams, and fears. You need to know what really makes them tick and what doesn’t. What is it they really value? It’s the above which will give you the power to get into their heads and hearts and inspire them to choose your brand over others.

Be clear on what you want

You need to know how you want to transform your audience, not just that you want to transform them. Often, it is hard for a brand to detail specific changes they want and how to measure the success. It’s important to define the overall goal. The change in emotions you wish to create when the guest enters the experience compared to how they feel when they leave.

Once you have defined these changes, you can set out to do so.

Have a single theme

You don’t want the consumer to be confused about your story. You need to know your brand destination and create a central idea. In the mind of the audience it must be simple, emotional, personal and engaging. The audience should have a clear understanding of the brand story, what you want them to experience and ultimately, what you want them to take away and eventually act upon through their consumer behaviour.

Create an emotional journey

Appealing to the senses and emotions of your audience is key. The use of music, colour, spatial design and narration are all elements that enhance the memory. Orchestrating the emotional highs and lows of every turn will avoid a campaign becoming boring and blending in.

Engage the senses

Brands primarily focus on sight without utilising the opportunity to appeal to audience’s other senses such as sound, smell, touch and taste. This is where experiential marketing is different; your audience get to immerse themselves in your brand, even for a short time.

Music helps set a mood, scents can transform an audience from one place to another whilst textures and flavours can be physically touched or tasted. Multi-sensory experiences see greater results compared to those brands who rely solely on singular-sense campaigns and transformative experiential marketing should leave a guest entirely satisfied and fully engaged with your brand and your products or services.

Create a bond

The most important secret to inspiring lifelong loyalty in a world where consumers have so much choice is creating moments of personal connection and interaction. Ensure your campaign is one that is memorable, whilst being engaging and encourages people to get involved.

The above secrets to transformative experiential marketing means brands can build a deeper connection with their audience, in turn delivering a top-of-mind connection when they are making future purchasing decisions and ultimately inspiring brand loyalty through more meaningful, personal brand experiences.