FAQs - Commonly Asked Questions About Experiential Marketing - dio

Frequently asked questions about experiential marketing

What is experiential marketing? We define experiential marketing as strategies that encourage consumers to participate, engage or interact with a brand, creating a memorable experience for the consumer. Our advertising revolves around consumer motivations – not necessarily media formats – in order to create immersive consumer experiences that drive better understanding of the brand.

What are some examples of experiential marketing? Experiential strategies include creating one-of-a-kind experiences, trade show activations, mobile marketing tours, sampling, pop-up marketing and PR stunts. Our full list of capabilities can be found here, and examples of our previous work can be found here. Check out our experiences of the week for stories that illustrate how experiential marketing can bring a brand to life.

How much does experiential marketing cost? All of our activations are customized specifically for the needs of our clients. We’ve activated campaigns for just a few thousand – to over $1 million, so it really can vary greatly. We’ll work within your specific budget…and find solutions to grow the return on your experiential investment.

How much of my overall marketing budget should be allotted to experiential? The great thing about experiential is that it can either standalone to bring someone through the entire discovery to purchase cycle, or it can complement – and even amplify – your other media plans. From our full-service advertising days, we’re familiar with evaluating the best ad spends for each channel based on your unique goals, and we’d be happy to discuss the overall marketing plan with you. If you’re just starting out in experiential and want to give it a try, we recommend starting small to see how experiential can drive results.

Can experiential marketing be measured to show ROI? Of course! Our philosophy is, “If it wasn’t measured, it never happened.” We work with our clients to identify their overall objectives, specific campaign goals and trackable KPIs to make sure we’re reporting back data that is actionable for you. On our blog, we talk about the real value of experiential marketing, 3 ways to measure experiential campaigns and what your post-campaign performance report will cover, as examples.

How can experiential marketing benefit my company? Experiential marketing can be used to effectively build brand awareness, recruit brand loyalists and provide impactful content for social media as well as other digital platforms and marketing purposes. Experiences create amazing stories that can be re-told in the form of commercials or pre-roll video ads. Additionally, effective experiential marketing can ultimately increase sales. Read about five of the benefits of experiential marketing on our blog.

What is your process to create an experiential campaign? We start with your objectives, create a strategy, then start the ideation process to design an experience. Our experience design journey is effective, because we collaborate with the client to fully understand the consumer motivations and goals for action.

Do you provide staffing for the events/activations? Yes, dio has a team of its own field managers available to activate anywhere in the continental United States, Canada, Alaska or Hawaii. Each campaign will have at least one field manager assigned to oversee all the in-market activity, from staffing to logistics. Plus, we will handle all brand ambassador staffing, using either W2 or 1099 employees based on the campaign needs, and brand ambassador training to ensure a fully turnkey campaign for you. Clients who want to be involved in the talent selection certainly are able to by viewing photos, intro videos and biographies of any brand ambassador being considered for hire.

Is production included in experiential activations? Yes, we offer fully turnkey campaigns from strategy to concept to production to execution to evaluation! However, we also collaborate well with other agencies. So if production isn’t needed, we can integrate with your existing team(s) and deliver experiential strategies or staffing – without doing the build-out. Let’s talk about where you are and what you need, and we’ll be happy to fill in the gaps.

Do you have creative capabilities? Yes, our in-house artistic team is at your disposal. They will ensure the visual direction of your experiential campaign aligns with your brand and that all campaign assets come together to create one cohesive experience.

Are you able to create premiums? Absolutely. If you’re looking for giveaway items, flyers or tchotchkes to support your campaign, we will be happy to assist in the design, sourcing and production.

Where can you run experiential campaigns? Campaigns can be activated anywhere within the continental United States, Hawaii, Alaska and Canada.

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