How 'experience impact' is ushering in a new era of experiential marketing

The experience marketing industry continues to undergo massive transformation, and I believe the next frontier will involve better demonstrating the impact of live experiences; providing heightened personalisation, qualifying client leads, augmenting experiences through artificial intelligence, and being the source of content for broader, far-reaching campaigns to drive business results.

Yes, I know, measuring things is not a new revolution. We’ve been ringing that bell in the experiential space for at least two decades. But here’s the thing: Like our advertising brethren who historically claimed they could measure the effectiveness of a TVC by the surge in power during an ad break, the experiential business has struggled to definitively claim a sale. Unlike digital experiences, where every command, interaction, and, in some cases, sale can be directly attributed, live experiences are more intuitive and analogue. But that’s changing thanks to new technologies.

With permission, we can now build very accurate profiles, behaviours, preferences, and habits of attendees. The fact that clients and prospects spend a significant amount of time at an event gives us more opportunities to interact, influence, and learn from them.

While this is all great for the brand/event owner, there comes heightened responsibility and pressure to design more engaging and interactive experiences: There’s a fine line between enhancing the experience and crossing into creepy territory.

So, do live experiences really drive business results?

In response to this debate, GPJ Australia recently launched a survey—Prepare For Impact—based on a robust two-stage research study, combining qualitative and quantitative research, which uncovered some rich insights about our industry.

The key findings were:

• There’s a disconnect between C-suites and marketers when it comes to their perception of experience marketing, its purpose, and what success looks like.
   
• Campaigns built around a live experience designed for key moments in the B2B sales journey are more effective than one-off executions.
   
• Word-of-mouth recommendations are providing vital reassurance for B2B buyers, and communities created at events are becoming a catalyst for business decision-making.
   
• We need to do a better job of leveraging technology to collect attendee data and use these audience insights to enable more sophisticated, predictive communication pre-, during, and post-event.

What we measure affects what we do; metrics need to span audience participation, brand sentiment, and business impact to ensure we tell the whole story. 'Experience impact' is the next experiential revolution.

Experience impact is the next experiential revolution

We’ve learnt a lot from this research. As an industry, we need to first focus on proving the impact of experiences. This requires collaboration between marketing and sales teams to plan, capture, and review qualitative and quantitative results and to then use this data to optimise future events. If we get this measurement piece right, it opens the door to a huge opportunity.

Qualifying leads is an expensive endeavour online and can be more naturally sourced from in-person interactions, where we have more time and the ability to interact humanly (and digitally). By designing trackable pre- and post-event digital interactions, as well as physical engagements during the event, marketers will gain unparalleled intelligence on target audiences. Our industry will then be in a position to review the costs of lead qualification via experience marketing and compare this to the current go-to online marketing tactics. If you want to build a quality pipeline, I believe an experience will be the most useful tool in any marketer’s toolkit.

And last but not least, ensuring that the content created around a physical experience is repurposed to maximise investment is a no-brainer for those curating and delivering experiences. Ensuring that halo marcoms are planned from the outset is the only way this can be effective, but when done well, this accelerates business results.

How new technologies are making this possible

In today’s data-obsessed world, first-party data has become more crucial than ever, especially with AI becoming so advanced. It’s not just about collecting data, but making sense of it and applying learnings. This information gives us a clear picture of what our customers want and how they behave, so we can create highly personalised and effective marketing campaigns and further empower sales teams.

With AI's capabilities growing and the impending demise of cookies, the ownership of quality first-party data will provide brands with a competitive advantage over the rest in training future AI models; helping them predict trends, tailor interactions, and boost engagement and sales.

In conclusion, marketers and sales teams need to take a more strategic approach to the planning of their events, and agencies need to upskill to support this. If experiences are to be taken seriously within the marketing mix, we all need to start a brief with 'why'? rather than launching straight into menus and venues. Transience during and post-pandemic has left brands’ databases in disarray, but recent developments in technology allow us to create experiences that not only entertain but also question, converse with, and qualify our audiences.

The opportunity is now.

Ben Taylor is the CEO of Project Worldwide for APAC, overseeing 16 offices in the region including brand experience agencies George P. Johnson as well as JUXT, Spinifex, Dark Horse and Raumtechnik.