We’ll be honest, it depends. There’s no right or wrong answer as it’s completely bespoke to your project. The quarterly Bellwether Report from the IPA reports that the investment from brands in experiential marketing increased in 2019, up by 3.4% from 2018.
You don’t need a colossal budget to pull off a successful activation. Making sure it aligns with your branding can be the all-important difference between a forgettable event and one that delivers real ROI.
Here are some areas that could affect the experiential marketing project cost:
- Location, Location, Location
- How Big Do You Want to Go?
- Taking Advantage of the Latest Tech
- In Your Own Hands or Working With a Third-Party
Location, Location, Location
A staggering 82% of potential attendees say their decision to attend an event is influenced by its location. Whether it’s a rooftop pop-up store on an underwater product showcase, location is paramount for experiential marketing. And of course, the location must be chosen strategically to ensure it aligns with your branding.
In some circumstances, location fees can take up a large percentage of your overall budget. However, certain locations are just worth that extra spend. You need to strike the balance between a place that resonates with your brand and somewhere that doesn’t leave you massively out of pocket.
Don’t be afraid to move away from the typical conference format either. Known as “festivalisation”, companies are steering clear of traditional venues and agendas in favour of activations that break the mould and keep audiences engaged.
How Big Do You Want to Go?
A successful experiential marketing campaign is first designed with growth and scale in mind. In the early planning stages, you should evaluate how the overall activation can be scaled up or down.
Brand experiences can come in all shapes and sizes. You can spend a little or invest more based on your goals and aspirations. Sometimes, you might just want to test the waters.
You can go big like we did for Escentric Molecules’ perfume range at Liberty London, embedding LED light sheets and 3D snowflake centrepieces to create a silver wonderland. Or you can create something more intimate like we did for Aldi, incorporating tactile games that encouraged children to get involved in the activation.
Some brand activations you might see demand a permanent installation, but an easy way to add scale to your experiential marketing activation is by making it mobile. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, like a simple pop-up shop.
Taking Advantage of the Latest Tech
We recognise it’s not especially cheap to have facial recognition software, highly visual 3D projection mapping, voice activation and everything else in between at your event. But considering how much technology has changed the experiential marketing game, we think you should reconsider your strategy to include it.
Event technology works in two ways. It makes the experience more effective and it allows activations to be shared quicker than ever before, giving your event the potential to go viral.
Fully-integrated software platforms allow brands to become entirely immersive for consumers. Fancy tech such as wearables, NFC, mobile apps, RFID, facial recognition and data collection can all unite to increase connectivity between brands and audiences.
From Land Rover to Topshop, we’ve seen VR and AR utilised in spectacular ways. They’ve become a regular sight at exhibitions and roadshow stands, transporting visitors to another world with just the touch of a button. It’s a highly effective way of promoting your brand’s message, placing your audience right in the middle of it.
There are a plethora of ways you can entertain people with virtual reality, including gamification, demos of your products and immersive walkthroughs. As the headsets popularise in the domestic setting and become more affordable, the possibilities are untold.
So what are you waiting for?
In Your Own Hands or Working With a Third-Party
Taking matters into your own hands might seem ideal at first but it’s no surprise experiential marketing costs more when you have to purchase all the equipment, graphics and tech by yourself. Although you have a full overview of the process, you might not have everything required to make your experiential dreams a reality.
If you’re searching for experts to work with that can help you leave a lasting impression, great news. You’ve come to the right place. At Service Graphics, we create visual experiences that strive to connect people to brands.
Did we mention we’re also unbelievably good at helping brands like yours run successful experiential marketing campaigns? We have expert teams at our disposal, specialising in exhibitions, events, signage, retail and more.
You could say we know a thing or two about experiential marketing. That’s why we’ve created the ultimate experiential marketing playbook to help you out.
Get the Experiential Marketing Playbook
This guide has everything you could possibly need, from the benefits, tips on running your campaign, examples you can take inspiration from and loads more.
To get your own copy of this playbook and blow your competition out the water, click on the link below to get your copy.
