Street Sampling Blog

Experiential marketing lets your customer immerse him or herself in your product before buying it. Major department stores use this type of marketing all the time, but experiential marketing does not stop there. While a street sampling company works offline for a myriad of business models, promoting a wide variety of online businesses using the backbone of experiential marketing is also possible. So let’s explore the question, “Can experiential marketing be used to target your customers online?” (And if so, how)

Think of experiential marketing online as the ways to create reaction and interaction with your website visitor. Flash, 3D technology, surveys, and blogging are just some of the methods you can use to create that “in your face” reaction your business might need. However, just being “artsy” for the sake of doing something odd is not a solid enough business plan. Your intercept marketing concept should have a goal in mind. What that goal will be will be up to you – but have a purpose.

Need an idea? Your experiential marketing planning might include careful research on your targeted customers. As mentioned above, an interactive survey draws people in, and achieves your goal to collect specific demographics about your visitors. A carefully crafted survey can supply your business with statistics for months to come and provide direction and focus for your online business marketing plan.

When you add the “experiential” experience to your website, you take it out of the passive state and make it dramatic. People remember dramatic; they are drawn to the unusual.

Along with proper website development, your mapping and planning for traditional forms of marketing (search engines marketing; email marketing, banner advertising, etc.) don’t forget this critical component. You can start as small as a form for your visitor to fill out to full-fledged videos and interactivity.

Make your website memorable. Your goal is the make your site stand out from the crowd. Implement an online experiential marketing plan and reap the benefits.

(discovering the benefits to enhancing your bottomline through the use of experiential marketing)

A quick explanation of experiential marketing can be found on the pages of Wikipedia.org. They state:

Experiential marketing attempts to connect consumers with brands in personally relevant and memorable ways. The alternative term customer-experience marketing emphasizes the idea of communicating the essence of a brand through a personalized experience.

As a marketing methodology, experiential marketing aims to move beyond the traditional “features-and-benefits” marketing, cast to a wide audience that includes not only those who may benefit from a brand or product, but also those who would not benefit at all. (As a result of such traditional marketing, people avoid messages whenever possible and by any means possible i.e. pop-up blockers, the United States National Do Not Call Registry and DVRs (such as TiVo) to avoid exposure to commercials.) In contrast, experiential marketing presents an experience that people choose to attend to and participate in after identifying the relevance of a brand or product to their needs.

StreetSampling.com is a full service company with excellent references designed to meet your needs when it comes to product and service promotion.

Interactivity enhances branding and bonding for your customer. Experiencing a product or service through an experiential medium is a surefire way to increase your marketing return on investment.

(experiential marketing social media events information)

Excerpts from: Atlanta Business Chronicle – by Giannina Smith, Staff writer; Friday, June 6, 2008

Scott Thurston, president of Washington, D.C.-based marketing firm Street Sampling Inc., said the recent increase in sampling by big consumer brands may be linked to the economy, but can also be attributed to the changing media landscape.

“What I hear more from clients is that the landscape is very cluttered and traditional advertising isn’t as effective any more,” Thurston said. “I do think the economy is playing a role, but it‘s also a more direct measurable opportunity to get a product out there than traditional media. I think a lot of the brand managers, especially with consumer product companies, are starting to realize that.”

“It was at the forefront of voice over Internet and lot of people didn’t understand it,” Thurston said. “Another reason was sheer competition.”

In some cases sampling could be a cheaper alternative to traditional advertising. According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the average national 30-second television spot cost $335,000 to produce in 2006. Thurston said a sampling program involving 50,000 giveaways could cost $15,000 to $20,000 in man hours, plus promotional extras, and could have a more favorable sales result.

“Running a national television spot you‘ll have millions of impressions and exposure, but it won’t necessarily translate to action on the part of the consumer for purchase, whereas interaction in a sampling program, one-to-one with a brand ambassador, the consumer is much more apt to develop a more favorable impression of the brand and ultimately act and purchase,” Thurston said.

Thurston said retailer Costco Wholesale Corp. is an example of a company that recognized the strength of sampling early on.

“If you go all the way back to the late ’70s and early ’80s, Costco really probably pioneered sampling,” Thurston said. “They knew from the beginning if they could feed people while shopping in the aisles of Costco they had a very high probability of converting a person to a sale.”