Events and experiences have taken over the advertising industry in recent years. We used to live in a world where brands could run a campaign on television and their products would sell off shelves faster than you can say 1,2,3. We don’t live in that time anymore, wouldn’t you agree?
The world is a busy place. More than ever before, brands need to take proactive initiative to get in front of their customers, connect with them on a personal level and deepen the relationship through meaningful brand experiences.
To maintain and grow their customer base, brands need to go above and beyond traditional mediums like TV, print and radio to get into the head and hearts of their consumers. What does your brand have to offer them that helps, makes them happy or makes their life easier? You need to ask yourself these questions before your get started with your plans.
In my experience, nothing works better than a 360 degree approach to marketing. Here are 29 ways to make your next event or marketing campaign a massively memorable success.
It could take some time for you to get through all 29 points, so before you get started, if this is your first time to the Tigris website or haven’t been here in a while, I have a few suggestions for you.
If YOU are in marketing and would like to collaborate on some creative concepts to make your next event a smashing success, then please book a consultation with our team of dedicated account managers by calling 647-286-9392 .
If YOU would like to learn more about how Tigris can take the weight off your shoulders and plan your event so you don’t have to, please read our special post on “How Turnkey and Stress-Free Tigris’ Services Are”
If YOU already know what you want to do for your event and just need help figuring out how or who to hire, click here for a free no obligation quote.
If YOU have an amazing idea already and don’t feel you have the time to read through all 29 reasons on how you can make your next event a massively memorable success, download it and listen to it later.
#29 – GET TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER
At the heart of creating an impactful event is exactly that – the heart!
The first step in creating a massively memorable and successful event is determining how you want to make people feel. The most memorable experiences…
– stir the heart
– make you laugh, cry, or think (or all three)
– inspire you
– help you learn, teach, grow, share, do more, give more and/or be more
Experiential marketing, in its very essence, is about creating experiences that connect to others emotionally. Wouldn’t you like to make your audience laugh or cry? Get them to feel something. Create an experience that inspires them to dream bigger dreams, become better people, do more, give more and also, to be more.
Whoa, whoa, whoa… don’t get ahead of yourself. You may know what you’d like to make your customers feel but don’t you think it would be a good idea to make sure you know them first. That brings me to our next point.
#28 – ASK YOURSELF: WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS?
You’ll need to ask yourself some questions… and better yet, try to poll your customers before going down this path. Before your plans take shape, you need to discover:
– what is memorable to them?
– what matters to them?
– what gives them job?
– what are their dreams and what do they dream about?
– what problems do they have? And how can YOUR BRAND help them?
Once you have a clear understanding of your customer and know how you want them to feel, you can start the ball rolling.
#27 – WALK A DAY IN THE LIFE OF YOUR CUSTOMER
Now that you know who your customers are, you’ll need to make sure you understand their experience of using your product or service. Examine and analyze every single touch point that your customers have with your brand and determine where they are using your products, and how. Where can you create an experience that your consumers will see? Put the experience directly in their path so they are unable to miss it.
#26 – SIMPLICITY IS BEST
Keeping in mind that people are busy, and may not have a ton of time to invest in your experience, it would be a great idea to keep in mind that adage to “keep it short and sweet” – or “sweet and simple”.
Sometimes the very best and most authentic experiences are… the most simple. Don’t complicate things. Focus on how you can create a special moment that surprises, delights, fascinates or intrigues your customer. Keep it easy so you can engage customers. After all, you want them to remember the experience!
#25 – ATTRACT ATTENTION
While your concept may be simple, that doesn’t mean that the scope should be. Whether you’re captivating a huge audience in one place or smaller engagements that are captured on photo and video with the prospect of going viral on social media, the news or another medium, your goal should ALWAYS be attention.
Why is this so important?
It’s human nature for people to be attracted to people, company’s and brands that stand out. Make your consumer feel attraction towards your brand!
#24 INCORPORATE BRAND LOVE
Increase the affection that clients and consumers feel towards your brand or business. How do you do this? Well, you need to get consumers to fall in love with your brands image, mission, goals and ideology. Instead of focusing on product attraction, make your consumers fall inlove with your brand and your overall mission. Have them believe in something bigger than the product: the experience. Think outside of the box and create an experience that incorporates your brand image, attracts your consumer and isn’t directly product based.
#23 DEFINE YOUR GOALS
What are you hoping to achieve from your event? You may have an awesome, experiential marketing concept but none of your fancy ideas will matter if your goals are undefinable. Ask yourself if you are looking to increase sales, brand awareness or introduce a new product. The entire experience must help you achieve your main goals for your business.
#22 MAKE IT SOCIAL AND SHAREABLE
Consumers of all ages love sharing their experience. Tie in the aspect of sharing the experience via social media by creating brand related hashtags, a photo booth, or an incentive to share their experience.
Incentives to share an experience can range from trips, free products to a VIP night for two. Think about what your consumers want, and give them the tools for their chance to win that experience. It’s important to give back to the consumer, so that they ultimately give back to you – by sharing, liking, and expressing loyalty towards your brand.
Think about which social media tool works best for you. Do you want your consumers to share their experience on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? Each social media outlet has its own special characteristics; one outlet may work better for your campaign than the other. Choose which one works best for you!
#21 CHOOSE THE RIGHT TEAM
Sometimes, we all need a little help from our friends. When looking at outside sources to assist, plan or staff your event, be sure to choose the right team! Some agencies are more expensive than others, but be sure you know exactly what you are paying for. Everyone wants more bang for their buck, but it’s also important to remember that you pay for what you get. When price shopping, don’t rush to the bottom line and simply look at the price tag – be sure to evaluate the quality of the services you are paying for.
If you’re interested in staffing your event, be sure to take your time selecting the right team. Look for appearance AND experience. The right agency will assist you in selecting the perfect events staff to accurately represent your brand and make your event a massively memorable success.
#20 BRANDED, EYE CATCHING UNIFORMS
Depending on the event, you may want your staff and yourself to be in awesome, branded, eye-catching uniforms. What image are you trying to create? Are you looking for sleek and classy uniforms, or fun, bright uniforms? If you are executing a street promotion, what will make your target demographic stop dead in their tracks?
You may even want a larger than life size mascot for your event, or enormous mobile billboards. The opportunities are endless. Just be cautious and make sure that every aspect of your event makes sense and blends well with your event.
Depending on if your event takes place indoors or outdoors, you must take the weather into effect. You may need branded jackets, umbrellas and/or boots!
#19 MAKE IT MEASURABLE
Your event may appear to be a massively memorable success, but the numbers must be meaningful as well. How many brand impressions did you make? How many people participated? How many samples did you distribute? How many sales did you make? How many leads did obtain? How many of these leads were successful? How many people participated in your promotional contests?
Make sure the answers to these questions are tangible. The last thing you want is to pull off an awesome event with no idea if it succeeded in financial results.
#18 GET PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE
Make your event interactive, fun and engaging. Whether you want your consumer to participate in a game, take a photo, try a free sample or enter a contest, you need to make people WANT to participate.
How do you get people to participate? Make it fun and make the experience worth their time. Incorporate fun swag, offer them big prizes and make it a unique experience one they don’t want to miss out on.
#17 HAVE CLEAR, OPEN COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ALL PARTIES
Regardless of the size of your team for your event, make sure you have open, clear communication between everyone on and off site that is involved in the production.
As an agency that specializes in staffing, we love to give our team plenty of notice and preparation time for your events. The more transparent you are with us about your goals, key messaging and brand image, the better we can prepare our staff to rock your event.
#16 MAKE TIME FOR QUALITY TIME
The best part about experiential, 3D marketing is that you are able to spend one-on-one time with your consumers. Make sure you get some quality time in with your consumers during your event! Ask for feedback, make them feel valued, and keep them happy. Creating a positive experience for one consumer will create a ripple effect and that one consumer will become your brand ambassador. Create multiple, one-on-one experiences and you will have an enormous tidal wide of support from your consumers which will ultimately create a brand based community.
Traditional aspects of advertising such as radio and television eliminate the opportunity for quality time with consumers. You can shape their opinions with experiential marketing and create valuable relationships. You may be able to target less people at ones, but the experiences will be much more memorable and effective.
#15 PRODUCT TIE-IN
You may not have your product or services tangible onsite, but make sure that you tie in your services or products in some way. Offer a gift card to your store, coupons, BOGO, special offers and/or discounts that only apply to those at your event. You want consumers to leave your activation and make a purchase. Give them the incentive to do so with a discounted price or extra bonus.
#14 LISTEN TO FEEDBACK
The most effective way to create a massively memorable event is to listen to feedback from your consumers and coworkers. What’s great about experiential marketing is that you can listen to valuable feedback and adjust your event accordingly almost immediately. That’s the great thing about real-time events. If something isn’t working, your advertisement isn’t just sitting there published in thousands of newspapers, it’s happening RIGHT NOW and you can alter your methods to create a better experience for consumers.
#13 MAKE IT PURPOSEFUL
Do something really good for your consumer, don’t ask for anything in return and wait to see what happens. Think of your core consumer and what they could really benefit from, something they want but can’t necessarily access. Instead of simply sponsoring an event, create an event of your own. Give back to the community and they will want to stay in the know with your brand. Watch as your community grows online and throughout sales.
#12 CREATE BUZZ – PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE!
Whether you promote your event before or throughout the experience, it’s important to get people excited about your event. If you plan on putting on a free, surprise concert or any other concept that utilizes the surprise factor, you may not want to promote too many details of the event, but use the element of surprise to your benefit to build suspense.
You can also contemplate the idea of live promotion to let consumers know minutes before where you will be and what they should be looking for. Are you heading to a specific area to hand out free promotional material? Let them know minutes before! Are you promoting a new retail location? Give the first customers in line a reward!
#11 CREATE A FEEL GOOD EXPERIENCE FOR YOUR BRAND
People are naturally attracted to the positive. To be perceived positively, you must start out by being positive. When you feel good, and your employees feel good, your customers will feel that and you will begin to attract more of them. One of the biggest benefits you can create for your brand is making it your mission to help your customers. Feeling good is the foundation of all of the good things you will bring to your company and your brand.
At the ground level, this can be the customer service experience your brand lends to your customers from attracting them, intercepting to them, selling to them and maintaining them while they’re a customer. These are the basics. Where you can ramp up the experience is with just that – an experience.
Remember the West Jet Christmas video that went viral back in 2013? We didn’t work on that project but it’s the perfect example of a brand who created an amazing feel good experience and shared it with literally millions of people all around the world. Even if you weren’t one of the lucky people whose wish came true that day, the video would’ve still warmed your heart and may have even brought a tear to your eye.
What is your brand all about? How can you create a positive feel good experience for your brand? How can you share that experience beyond the reach of those you’re connecting with directly. These are all great questions that will lead you down the path of figuring out ways to make your next event a massively memorable success.
#10 LET YOUR REPUTATION PRECEDE YOU
Word of mouth is more powerful now than ever. Ten years ago or more, people may have talked to their friends and family about their thoughts, opinions and experiences about a company, brand, product or service. Speed ahead to 2015 and the prevalence of social media is making brands accountable. If someone experiences bad service, they can tell the whole world about it – and people will find out about it with hashtags, social media handlers, blogs and other sources. The good news is that this is encouraging and motivating brands to step up their game.
If you’re in the planning of a huge event, one of your goals should be the longevity of the event. If you promote and execute your event properly, people will be so excited to get involved in year 2, 3 or 10. Think about annual golf tournament fundraisers, street festivals or unique experiences like Bud Camp. People LOVE events like this and if you do it right the first time, your event will take on a life of it’s own. It will naturally attract participants so you can focus on more important things – like coming up with ways to make it bigger and better than ever year over year.
#9 GET FREE ADVERTISING
There are not very many things that can impact a business more than the media. Journalists are credible sources of information that people trust. If your business or brand is in the news, it is likely for a really good reason – or a really bad one. Media exposure of any kind, from TV and radio to print and online can go a really long way to get you noticed by the general public. You may have the greatest brand in the world and have an amazing event, but if only you and a small handful of guests know about it, it’s like it never happened.
#8 KEEP PEOPLE TALKING
You want people to remember your event and talk about it for days, weeks, even months after the promotion. You want them to see your logo or product and tell their friends “Hey, remember that time …” and get them to share their experience. Give people something to talk about… more specifically, something they want to talk about! You can get people talking by teaching, giving or doing something unique for your consumers.
#7 ADD A MOBILE COMPONENT
Text to win, contest entries, social media, coupon codes, or even customized apps specific to your event are all amazing mobile components that you can incorporate into your promotion. Everyone has their phones attached to them consistently, and by making them download your app or text-to-win they will be reminded of your promotion long after the event when looking through their phone. This is also a great way to get consumer e-mails and phone numbers so that you can follow up with them after the event. It’s a sneaky, effective way of achieving high lead-capture rates.
#6 MAKE THE MEDIA TAKE NOTICE
The media can be used to your benefit when creating an event. Tip off photographers, bloggers, and influential people in the industry. Even better, invite them to your event! The more exposure, the better. People who weren’t at your event or unable to experience your promotion will be wishing they had been able to participate. At least they will be able to read the details online!
Be sure to promote your event post-event as well. Write a blog on the event, tweet photos and share the experience.
#5 MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION
Experiential marketing is not only about getting your consumers to experience your brand. It’s also about educating them, helping them learn and understand new/exciting ways your brand can help make their lives, better, easier or more efficient.
Make it a part of your marketing plans to motivate people to believe in your brand and more importantly to take action. By offering a genuine effort to help them, they will see value in your product, service, company. It’s a reciprocal effect.
One great example of this was a program we worked in association with a charity several years back where we extended random acts of kindness. This includes opening doors for people, offering to help them carry their bags etc. this was simply passing along a message of kindness to spread the word about the charity, their work and where their money goes towards. People loved it and the charity saw an incremental life in donations in the weeks that followed. Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.
#4 KEEP AHEAD OF THE CURVE
What are the biggest and best brands in the business doing? How do you get to the top of your industry. You need to be in tuned with what’s going on in your market, research trends and keep your ear to the ground so to speak. Your goal should be to stay ahead of the pack, keep your team innovating and think of new and exciting ways to connect with your consumers.
We understand it can be hard to work on your business if you’re immersed with working in the business. This said, you need to carve out some time to think of your marketing strategy. If you’re a big business, of course you’ll have teams set up and dedicated to events, sponsorships, marketing etc., but for the little guys, it can be tough when you’re wearing so many hats. You may want to consider partnering with a third party agency who can assist you in these areas so you don’t fall behind.
#3 HAVE A BACK UP PLAN
In marketing and events, having a back up plan is essential. Often times, you only have one chance to make your event a massively memorable success. Living in Canada, you need to take into consideration a whole slew of weather elements from sleet and snow to rain, heat and even flooding.
Now, you won’t be able to completely bullet proof your event and if the weather doesn’t cooperate, there can be impacts on your event but you should still be prepared. This could include having green garbage bags to cover speakers and protect them from rain, sand bags to weight your tent and prevent it from blowing away along with your signs, keep water available for guests on a hot day. The list goes on.
The tip here is to think of any foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstances and BE PREPARED!
#2 CREATE A CALL TO ACTION SO YOUR EVENT IS SHARED ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Nowadays everyone has their smart phone connected to their hip. While lots of people will check in at your event, post photos and be engaged, you still need to create a call to action so the event is unified. During the pre-promotion of your event, create a unique social media account for the event as well as a hashtag so people can engage directly with your brand and your event.
Your messaging may also include incentives for people to participate and showcase the event on social media such as winning a prize for the best event selfie or most creative collage from the event! People love to win free things so this can really ramp up your social media engagement. Before you know it, your event could be trending!
Social media is a fabulous way to extend the reach of your event. Only a limited number of people may be able to participate on any given day, on any given location – it’s social media that will allow you to increase your return on investment, generate excitement for annual events and build a strong relationship with your consumers.
#1 IF YOUR WHY IS BIG ENOUGH, YOU’LL FIGURE OUT HOW
What do you stand for? What does your business stand for? Why do you do what you do, day in and day out? How does your product or service make the lives of other people better? Ultimately, people are in business because they want to make money. But it’s not the money – it’s what the money allows you to do like taking care of your family, pursuing your passions, enjoying your life and making the lives of those around you better, more fulfilled and enriched. I’ll tell you this – if your why is big enough, you’ll figure out how! Events are 1 of many ways that will help you fulfill your “why” but they are one of the best resources for brands, businesses and marketers to connect with consumers in a massively memorable way.
Before I go…….
I know this document was rather lengthy but I hope it has inspired you to reach above and beyond your traditional forms of advertising to connect with your customers on a deeper and more meaningful level.
As I mentioned previously, nothing works quite so well as a 360 degree approach to marketing. I’m sure it took some time to navigate all 29 of our tips to make your next event a massively memorable success… and if you made it, we’d like to thank you and close with a few friendly reminders.
If YOU are in marketing and would like to collaborate on some creative concepts to make your next event a smashing success, then please book a consultation with our team of dedicated account managers by calling 647-286-9392 or emailing us
If YOU would like to learn more about how Tigris can take the weight off your shoulders and plan your event so you don’t have to, please read our special post on “How Turnkey and Stress-Free Tigris’ Services Are”
If YOU already know what you want to do for your event and just need help figuring out how or who to hire, click here for a free no obligation quote.
If YOU have an amazing idea already and don’t feel you have the time to read through all 29 reasons on how you can make your next event a massively memorable success, download it and listen to it later.
Successfully yours,
Serena Holmes
Tigris, CEO
