At our core, GPJ creates human-centred experiences – in any format, on any channel – that connect brands with their audience in order to achieve their business goals.
Building awareness, fostering interest and securing your audience’s attendance to an upcoming experience (in-person, hybrid or virtual) is a challenge for any marketer and yet key to success. An effective communication strategy is vital in delivering an exceptional experiential marketing campaign. This means curating end-to-end experiences that span pre- and post-experience to ensure that we get the right people ‘in the room’ and have the right conversations afterwards to achieve the desired marketing goals. At GPJ, our belief is that audience engagement is an integral part of any experiential marketing initiative that our clients ask us to deliver.
Here are five of our top tips to ensure a successful outcome for your experiential marketing campaign
Top tip #1: Plan ahead.
Timing recommendations vary depending on the audience and format of the experience. At GPJ, we often work with our clients on projects that are curated for time-poor C-suite audiences.
While this group is highly desired by marketers, they are also tough to convene and selective in what they attend. When delivering an exclusive C-suite experience, we recommend allowing for initial communication to be sent 1-2 months in advance and post-event nurture programmes to commence one week after the experience.
Top tip #2: Choose your channels wisely.
People are exposed to thousands of marketing impressions per day and EDMs are the go-to tactic for B2B communications; but did you know, direct mail has the highest effectiveness rating among all channels for reaching senior executives? Think about what channels your audience typically use when they have their professional hat on, but don’t forget that we are all human and an invite that leverages the memorable, sensory experience of opening a package or an envelope is likely to result in an RSVP. It is also important to understand the unique strengths of specific marketing channels (email, direct mail, websites, social media, display ads etc) for delivering different content formats when designing the channel palette.
Top tip #3: Relevance is key.
We live in exceptionally noisy times. At GPJ, we are passionate about putting the audience at the heart of the experiences we deliver, and this extends to the comms touch points that live either side of the live moment too.
Think about your audience and what will resonate with them; relevant content and messaging is much more likely to pique their interest. People won’t take time away from their desk, either in the office or at home, unless they are convinced through effective communication that they’ll get significant value from attending an event.
Top tip #4: Aesthetics matter.
People process visual content 60,000 times faster than text-based content, therefore static images and video content are likely to attract more attention. Instagram and Meta are perfect platforms for communicating and sharing visually appealing, eye-catching content, so leverage these to your advantage and create the right kind of content for the different platforms you are using as part of your comms strategy.
Top tip #5: Have a clear CTA.
A strong call-to-action (CTA) is one of the most critical factors of any effective experiential marketing campaign.
Impactful CTAs help to achieve business goals that could include achieving attendance targets, improving conversion rates, boosting revenue and increasing profit. Ensure successful outcomes by crafting clear, simple and compelling CTAs to get your audience to take the desired action.
There we have it, our five top tips for getting people to your experiences. At GPJ, we believe audience engagement is an integral part of any experiential marketing initiative. Thinking about who we want to speak to, what they want to hear, and where and when to reach them is vital and should be factored into your planning from the very beginning.