Why Should Experiential Marketing Be a Part of Your B2B Marketing Strategy?

The traditional approach of marketing has revolved around furnishing customers with content or advertisements that highlight the benefits of a particular product or service. However, in today's B2B digitalmarketing space, customers have become immune and insensitive to such product or company-oriented tactics. As customers are increasingly demanding and expecting a personalized experience from brands, marketers are turning towards experiential marketing.

What is meant by experiential marketing?

The idea behind experiential marketing is to completely engage and immerse your customers in your brand. Rather than advocating your solution, the focus remains on your customers’ experience with the brand.

The ultimate goal of experiential marketing is forge an emotional connection that will promote customer loyalty and customer lifetime value (CLV). It is alternatively known as ‘engagement marketing’, ‘event marketing’, or ‘live marketing’.

How can experiential marketing benefit B2B marketing companies?

Customers interact with brands though emails, company website and social media. However, these exchanges seem impersonal. Through experiential marketing, customers can experience authentic and one-on-one interactions with your brand. Such positive experiences make you stand out in their eyes and induce them to return to your brand. 

Most importantly, this approach influences word-of-mouth sharing. People trust peer reviews more than any printed or digital advertisements. Thus, a providing a strong customer experience can greatly boost your inbound marketing efforts.

How to include experiential marketing in your B2B marketing strategy

Before anything else, it is imperative that you know your audience, their pain points and their expectations. Once you do this, you can gain greater insights into the kind of experience you need to provide, that will resonate the most with your audience.

Some ideas for offering a great experience to your target audience are -

• Directly interact with decision makers and influencers through trade shows, VIP events or conferences

•  Leverage technologies like AR and VR to give immersive product demos to potential customers

• Take your clients on an outdoor excursion to build a long-lasting business relationship and inspire customer loyalty

Keep in mind that experiential marketing is not a one-off process with an event or a publicity show, but a continuous process that narrates the brand’s story encourages active participation from the customers.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.