Transcript | 3 : What is Experiential Marketing and Why I’m Here For It | The Experiential Table Podcast

CYNTHIA SAMANIAN: You're listening to The Experiential Table episode three.

Hi there! Welcome to The Experiential Table. I'm Cynthia, your host and CEO of Hidden Rhythm, an experiential marketing agency for natural food and wellness brands.

This, my friends, is an episode you are not going to want to miss. When I teach what I'm going to share today in my in-person workshops, I feel like I can see actual light bulbs go off in my students' heads. It's a game-changing way to think about events and your brand, so stick with me.

Our last episode was all about what experiential marketing is and I shared a little bit about my story. If you haven't listened to it, I recommend starting there then coming back to this episode.

Today, we're talking about why experiential marketing works. Why should you care given all the other marketing priorities you have in your business?

Well, I'm definitely all in on experiential. My business is based off of it and I've even gone so far as to create a podcast around it. So I am very excited to share with you why I think it's the future of marketing.

But first, today's episode is brought to you by Hidden Rhythm's Food & Wellness Show List. You and I both know that the food and wellness space is exciting, right? It's SO exciting that there are hundreds of FOMO-worthy conferences and trade shows every year in the U.S.

Keeping track of them is close to impossible. When we went searching for a list of events to help our clients out, the Internet left us hanging so we at Hidden Rhythm, decided to create our own. With our free Food & Wellness Show list, you can easily figure out what shows you want to be a part of and get all the relevant information you need in just a click. No more scouring the Internet trying to find the latest dates and locations for the trade shows that you want to be a part of.

Instead, you can focus on the other parts of your business and making sure that when you show up, it’s an awesome experience. So be sure to get your copy of the Food and Wellness Show List by heading to hiddenrhythm.com/showlist. We'll also have a link in the show notes so you can easily access it there.

Now let's get started. What if I told you that there was a way to market your brand that's more effective than a highway billboard, TV commercial, or even a Facebook ad? That's exactly what experiential marketing offers and I cannot wait to tell you more about why this form of marketing works. In our last episode, we defined experiential marketing as creating engaging experiences in the offline world. The goal is to build a relationship with your target customer that will turn into brand loyalty and eventually drive sales. With that in mind, I'm going to share three reasons why experiential marketing works.

The first reason is that relationship matters more than ever in today's marketing world. Now, maybe you've heard this before and you understand the power of relationship already, but I want to take it back and really break it down so that we understand even more about relationship, not just the fact that it matters, but how we got to this point.

So for decades, successful brands, the ones that we know and love, have been those who have differentiated themselves from the competition. Differentiation is probably a concept you've encountered, especially if you're a marketer or you're building a brand. I know that it's something I'm always thinking about because essentially differentiation as thinking through what sets you apart and that is so valuable in marketing. Not too long ago, brands competed on just a few things: price, performance and service.

So the first one is price. This is pretty straightforward. You could be competing on the low end or high end. What brands come to mind when we think about low price points? Walmart, Ikea. And what about the high end? Any luxury brand, maybe Gucci, Tesla?

Moving on to performance: an example that I love to think about here are blenders, right? And most of you listening here, you probably have a blender at home and you know that you could spend a lot and get a super high-performing blender, maybe a Vitamix, or you could spend much less and get one that's good enough for your everyday use, right? There's a range of performance here and brands compete on performance as well as price.

Lastly is service. Now a brand could really differentiate themselves by having incredible service like hassle-free returns, a friendly staff, you know, all the stuff that keeps us going back to some of our favorite stores. A great example of a company that definitely puts service above all is Zappos. They're incredible. And I actually had the chance to see one of their execs speak at a conference and it was so clear that they would practically do anything for their customers. They'll go so far as to even help you find a shoe that's not sold on their site. There are some other crazy stories about what Zappos is willing to do so you can Google them. The book Delivering Happiness by the founder of Zappos is also a great read.

But really what I want to make clear here is that we know of these brands and where they fit because they've been able to differentiate themselves. When I teach this in class and people immediately are ready to say, Oh, Zappos is known for service, or Walmart is known for low price. That's because they've trained us to think that way and they've done a really good job of marketing themselves so that we know right away what they're all about.

Now back in the day, it was enough to compete just on one of these differentiators. You could be the lowest price or the highest performing. Over time, one differentiator became two and two became three. But we're at the point today where it's not enough to be the lowest-priced, highest performing brand with the best service. There's another factor you need to consider, and that's relationship.

The most powerful brands today have built a real relationship with our target customer. Think about Everlane, Glossier and Patagonia. These brands have serious cult followings that other brands totally envy. And what sets these brands apart is the relationship they have with our customers. Alright, so that's it! Go build a relationship. If only it were that easy, but I'm not going to leave you hanging. We're going to dig deeper. So if relationships matter, then what drives a relationship?

I have some good juicy research to share with you. In a large study, the team from Event Marketer surveyed 5,000 consumers over a 10-year timeframe. They discovered that consumers who had the strongest relationship with a brand had these four characteristics.

The first is that the brand was relevant, meaning that the consumer identified with the brand. The second is that it made them feel better about themselves. The third was that it was meaningful; the brand really stood for something, and the fourth is that it helped them solve a problem. Now, one thing to point out here, it doesn't have to be a problem like we traditionally define it. So if you're hungry, food is the solution to your problem.

You can also think about the emotional and intangible solutions. For example, let's say you are the producer of nut-free granola for children. So the problem that you're solving here is not just that parents need to feed their children. You could also be solving the parent’s need to provide a snack that gives them peace of mind knowing that they could take it to school and not worry about other children having allergic reactions if they have a nut allergy. Or if it's a high-end product and it's priced at a premium, then there could just simply be an emotional need to feel like you're giving your children the best of the best and they may view price as a proxy for quality.

Now, if you review these four traits and you find yourself checking each of them off thinking, “absolutely my brand does each of these things”, then congratulations! You have set yourself up to have a really great relationship with your consumer and you can use experiential marketing to strengthen it even more.

If you run a brand and you don't think you're quite there yet with your customers and that you've really nailed those four traits in the customer relationship, then welcome to the club. That's what this is all about and experiential marketing can absolutely help you create a stronger bond and relationship down the road.

But remember like any relationship, in dating or in marketing, you cannot force it. You can, however, foster it through in-person events. So to recap, relationship absolutely matters and experiential marketing makes it easier to build one with your target customer. That is the first reason why I believe you should care about experiential marketing.

Now onto reason number two. Experiential marketing works because it's the only real form of two-way communication. So, going back to this idea of relationships, relationships don't work when there's only one-way communication. You need to have a dialogue. We experience this one-way outbound marketing, you could call it, every minute of every day. So whether it's driving down the freeway and seeing billboards, turning on your TV and getting some ads in between your favorite shows, or scrolling through social media and seeing ads left and right. The list goes on of all the many ways that we are getting served these outbound marketing ads and it's all one way.

It's like me, click me, buy me…sound familiar? It's noisy and it's super crowded and unless the ad really speaks to you or you've seen it a hundred times in a week, you probably can't even recall the last one you saw. I can't tell you how many times I remember a jingle from a commercial but couldn't even tell you the brand or the product. The landscape is crowded - it goes without saying, and so brands really need to get creative with how they connect and build relationships with their target customers. Instead of yelling at your customers through a megaphone, imagine that you're having a nice super chill coffee chat. Well experiential marketing is just that. Rather than tell your customers what they want or what they need, why not just ask them? You can use your event or workshop as a way to get to know them better and in turn improve your product and even the way you're marketing it. No matter what stage your business is in, getting to know your customers better is always a good thing.

Honestly, this may not even feel like marketing to you, right? If you're in a room or if you're at the farmer's market and you're engaging with a customer or someone who wants to learn more about your brand, you're just naturally having a conversation. You don't think about the ad copy or the graphics and your personality really shines through and that's what your customers are going to associate with the brand. So, remember, experiential marketing not only lets you have this great two-way dialogue with your target customer, you also are in a position where you can collect data that makes your product, your marketing message, all that good stuff, even better. To sum it up, experiential marketing will work for your brand because it's one of the only two-way communication channels. We're getting inundated with one-way outbound messages, so experiential really stands out.

Lastly, the third reason why experiential marketing will work for your brand is because when done well, it increases retention. So I want you to close your eyes and imagine a mountain. Now on the left, there's a vertical axis and right below the mountain is a horizontal axis. On the vertical axis is engagement or level of learning. On the horizontal axis is time spent. You can imagine that as you go up the mountain from left to right, you increase your level of engagement or learning as well as your time spent. At some point you hit the peak and then eventually you go back down to the base. Now what if I told you that the longer time you spend in engaging with something significant, the greater you remember or retain that information?

Let's start again at the bottom left of the mountain. Now, this reminds me of a traditional TV ad. You probably pay attention for a second or maybe five seconds if it's catchy and you're not learning or really engaging with much, right? As I said earlier, it's just this outbound message that's kind of yelling at you. So yeah, you could basically say the retention is very, very low. If anything.

Now as you move up the mountain, you're learning or your engagement increases and you're spending more time in the experience, so your attention gradually increases as well. At some point you get to the peak and that's where you've spent a significant amount of time engaging or learning. Maybe you're making something, meeting someone memorable and at that peak is where retention is at its max and that's what we're really shooting for here. Let me give you an example to put this more into practice.

I recently went to an awesome sourdough bread baking class a few weeks ago at The Mill in San Francisco. It was taught by the team behind Josey Baker Bread. If you've had their bread, then you know it's delicious and if you haven't then you should try and find it. I highly recommend it. Now, this class was all about how to make sourdough bread for beginners and it was two hours long, which was the perfect amount of time. In those two hours, we learned the fundamentals behind sourdough making. We got to touch and feel the dough. We got to smell the starter, which is definitely very sour and somewhat stinky, and we also got to roll the dough and get it prepped for baking. For those of you who have made sourdough before, you know that it takes more than a day and there are so many steps involved. But in this class they were able to break it down into the bits and pieces that were engaging and hands-on, balanced by some of the more educational content.

I'll say that after those two hours I was ready to go. I had a blast, but two hours was the peak for me. Beyond that, I couldn't remember anything more that was said. And that to me is the pinnacle of the experiential curve that I just described or that mountain. The degree of learning was super high. It was engaging. I was definitely learning all about how to make sourdough bread and I had enough time to really engage with the Josey Baker brand, right? I was there for two hours. So now when I think about where to buy my bread, I will look for Josie Baker and I have a strong affinity, not only towards them but even some of the products they recommended. And you better believe I even left the class buying one of their books, which was not required, but I could not wait to make more types of bread and spent $30 on a bread baking book.

Without a doubt, that experience will not only build loyalty but certainly drive sales from me as well as all the people I'm talking to about it, including you. Now, this doesn't mean that you should try and have the longest interaction possible. It's a mountain. So at some point, if the interaction is too long and you're not really learning or engaging with anything, then retention will drop. I like to think of this as the boring college lecture, right? If you had to take a prerequisite and you found yourself in, you know, a massive lecture with 500 other students, not the most engaging experience, you're probably staring off into space and not learning/retaining anything. That's where things start to drop off. So to recap, the longer the experience up to a certain point of course, and assuming you're learning and engaging with something, the greater chance of having it stored in your brain's memory.

Now any experience can generate short term memory, right? Like you may remember what you just had for breakfast, but it's the significant ones that actually become long term stored memories and that's what we want as experience creators. And that's what I'm all about: breaking down how we can make experiences that matter and are truly remembered when your target customer leaves your bread baking workshop and heads to the grocery store weeks later, you want them to recall the experience they had with your brand and pick your flour or your bread from the 10 other competitors on the shelves. That's the power of experiential marketing. It's not about fluffy events. It's about building a relationship through a significant experience that builds loyalty and drives sales. Pretty powerful stuff, right? Experiential marketing is the future. You heard it here first.

So to wrap it all up, here are the three reasons why I think experiential marketing will work for your brand. The first is that marketing is all about relationships. Some of the best brands have strong relationships with their customer based on the four pillars we talked about earlier. Now while you don't have to use experiential marketing to build a tight brand relationship with your customer, it certainly will help accelerate and foster it. The second reason is that the best relationships rely on two-way communication, and that is exactly what experiential marketing is about. With experiential marketing, you aren't talking at your customer, you're having a conversation with them. Remember, it's the difference between a megaphone and sitting down for coffee. I know which one I'd prefer, and the third reason is that great experiences drive brand retention. This is all about how your brain stores memories. Remember, we're trying to hit the peak of the mountain and really achieve the highest retention possible and have the experience stored in long-term memory.

As a bonus, I want to call out one more reason why I think experiential marketing will work for your brand. Often times I'll come across research that talks about millennials as the "experience generation", right? Maybe you've seen this too. While, yes, millennials are known to love Coachella and enjoy going to the Museum of Ice Cream, they're not the only ones who like to engage. In fact, we all as humans, yearn connection. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you'll find that love and belonging are right above food, shelter, safety and security. So if millennials aren't your target demo, maybe your best customers are 65-year-old women, I don't want you to rule out experiences. Experiential marketing is not just for millennials. It's for all people. I refuse to believe that experiential is a generational trend. It is where things are going in marketing because of the three reasons I've talked about in this episode.

Alright, that’s it for today's show! Now that you know why experiential marketing works, I hope you're feeling super inspired to learn more about how you can apply it to your brand. If you want to read more about the research I mentioned in this episode, check out the book titled Experiential Marketing written by the founders of Event Marketer. I'll also link it in the show notes for your easy reference. And also, just a reminder, we have transcripts published for every episode we record, so if you prefer to print the notes out, jot down your own comments and re-listen to this. Great, you can absolutely do that! Just head over to hiddenrhythm.com/episodes/3 to access this episode's show notes.

And let's keep the momentum going! If you haven't already, check out our private Facebook group, The Experiential Table. We're chatting inspiration, tactics, and all that good stuff in the group and it's growing every single day. Finally, if you enjoyed this episode then I would be so grateful if you would spread the word. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and even better share it with a friend or colleague. We want anyone who's looking for this type of podcast to be able to find it and use it as a resource. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'll be back next week with another fresh episode. Until then, get excited to get experiential. Talk soon!