Your customers are used to marketing. From television and print advertising to online ads and social media campaigns, they're familiar with the many and various ways that you want to market to them. Experiential marketing is a different kind of marketing altogether. It brings you and your customers together in a physical way, and it's very different than many of the marketing methods commonly used today.
The Value of Experience
In many ways, experiential marketing takes us way, way back to the days when you'd walk into a store and get to experience a product. That solid, hands-on enjoyment of a product's features would be its selling point. Today, much of marketing is ephemeral. Social media campaigns lean on customers' social engagement and interactions to make a sale. Inbound marketing creates information that acts as a pull to draw in customers. While other forms of marketing have their advantages, there's value in the solid experience of a product.
Experiential Marketing Isn't Always About Tangible Products
How does experiential marketing translate to products that aren't tangible, such as insurance? Today's experiential marketing is much more creative than the old-fashioned experience at the corner hardware store, and it translates beautifully to products that aren't hands-on products. For example, Sprite's use of a Sprite Shower invited customers to stand underneath a giant Sprite machine. Here, Sprite focused on the fun, beach party atmosphere of its product, encouraging customers to experience this as they took a shower. Experiential marketing may be hands-on, but it's the feeling behind a brand rather than trying out a product that's most important.
How Can Insurance Agents Use Experiential Marketing?
Who do you target with your products, and how do you want to make them feel? You've probably answered these questions over and over again. Let's say that you target families who are looking for security by purchasing home insurance. Home insurance isn't a tangible object, but you can certainly play on the ideas of family and security. How about creating the world's largest group hug or developing a machine that gauges the intensity of your squeeze when you hug it as if you were at the county fair? By considering your audience and how they'd like to get involved, you'll develop an experience that engages them.
Experiential Marketing Techniques
Your experiential marketing doesn't need to be huge, but it does need to catch peoples' attention. If you're stuck on the brainstorming, here are some techniques to try.
Add humor. Even if you're selling something that's not considered humorous, there's always a funny angle.
Add the wow factor. Red Bull's Stratus Jump was amazing, and that welded the connection between Red Bull, risk-taking, and edginess in peoples' minds.
Do it first, biggest, or best. Help people experience a record-breaking event.
Add group participation. When you're doing something silly or exciting, it's fun to do it with a crowd.
Make it a competition. Like the Ice Bucket Challenge, people love to compete with each other, and this can easily bridge the worlds of social media and experiential marketing.
Are you trying to move beyond your current marketing strategies? Connect with industry colleagues and consulting services with Agents Alliance. Contact us today to learn how membership can benefit you.
