Experiential marketing events are all the rage in the world of marketing today. This is made evident by the ever-increasing budgets for experiential marketing solutions, a trend that is seen all over the world.
One of the challenges faced by any event activation agency these days is finding the best way to determine the ROI of the budget for experiential events technology.
Determining the ROI of experiential marketing solutions can be a bit tricky as the primary objective of experiential marketing is to create brand awareness by letting the consumers experience the brand and there is a lack of clear metrics that can be used to demonstrate that.
In this blog, we’re going to take a look at some of the best tips to determine and demonstrate the ROI for experiential marketing budgets that any event activation agency can use.
What is ROI?
ROI stands for return on investment and is a standard metric used to judge the effectiveness of any project. In terms of experiential marketing, the ROI demonstrates the number of sales that were generated due to the investment in the experiential marketing solution by a brand.
Most businesses require a substantial ROI to keep track of the effectiveness of all their marketing initiatives. Still, due to the nature of experiential marketing, it can be a bit hard to demonstrate the ROI with clear-cut metrics.
Tip 1 – Focus on data collection
When it comes to events experiential marketing is one of the most engaging forms of marketing today. Instead of the traditional marketing approach where the goal is to demonstrate the selling points of the products or brands clearly, experiential marketing takes a more indirect approach by allowing the consumer to experience the core values of the brand using interactive, experiential events technology.
In order to measure the effectiveness of any experiential marketing initiative, collecting the right data is crucial if you’re aiming to measure the ROI for the initiative. Fortunately, due to the development of technology such as wearable tech, it is becoming increasingly easier to demonstrate the entire customer journey using data.
This is why every event activation agency should focus on using technology to collect the right kind of data that can represent the entire customer journey in a language that CRM systems and internal marketing systems can understand. This means you can directly link sales to every interaction that takes place at experiential marketing events.
Tip 2 – Ensure that the attendees opt-in
At events experiential marketing, if done right, can be the wow factor as they’re usually designed to be very engaging. However, a common trap that most event activation agency falls into is that they focus so much on the wow factor, they undermine the CTA.
This can be really harmful when it comes to demonstrating a clear ROI as one of the most fundamental metrics by which experiential marketing solutions are judged is the number of people who participated in the activation.
By focusing on creating a clear data collection and opt-in mechanism, you ensure that you have reliable data that can be used to show how engaging the activation was. This can then be used to demonstrate a clear ROI for the activation.
Tip 3 – Choose KPIs carefully
When you’re picking the KPIs for your experiential marketing initiatives, it is vital to do so very carefully. While some of the common KPIs like the number of attendees, purchases, or email captures are a step in the right direction, they still don’t give a clear picture of the overall ROI for the initiative.
When selecting KPIs for experiential marketing initiatives, it is essential to consider other aspects of the event too like lead generation KPIs like conversion ratio and brand awareness KPIs such as brand sentiment and social media brand awareness.
Conclusion
Experiential marketing is on fire these days and almost every business is getting in on the action. However, clearly defying the ROI on most experiential marketing initiatives is still a challenge and due to the massive budgets that are common these days, it is becoming a very important one to overcome. Here are 3 technology trends in experiential marketing that you must check out for your next event.
We hope this article was helpful! Keep reading this blog for the latest in the world of digital marketing, social media, and all kinds of technology!