How to Measure Experiential Marketing Success
If you’re excited by your latest experiential marketing campaign, you’re probably convinced it’ll be a hit. But what exactly does success look like to you – and how can it be measured? Increase your chances of achieving your marketing goals, by clearly defining your key performance indicators before you start.
Track your conversions
Customer conversions are the most obvious sign of success. Your campaign has persuaded people to do what you wanted! By keeping track of important KPIs such as sales and mailing list sign-ups, you’ll have the cold, hard data that shows how your campaign has performed.
- Sales. The ultimate goal of all marketers, the number of sales you make during an experiential marketing event is a key factor in its success.
- Sign-ups. Just as valuable as closing a deal is gathering information from individuals who want to know more about your brand. An experiential marketing event can be a fantastic opportunity to gain a bigger audience, so don’t forget to measure how many people sign up to your list.
Assess the event
What went well on the day and what can you improve on next time? Effective experiential marketing campaigns all have metrics that signify success. You will probably want to measure:
- How many people attended
- How long they spent there
- How many free samples you gave away
- How much press coverage you gained
Measure the buzz
Most experiential marketing campaigns seek to get everyone talking – not just face-to-face, but online, too. You should be aiming for a social media buzz around your event which will spread your publicity far beyond the confines of its geographical location.
- How many times is your event hashtag used?
- How many people watched a live stream from the event?
- How many likes and shares did your posts get?
Seek customer feedback
Measuring experiential marketing doesn’t just involve numbers and statistics. Brand activation is all about the consumer and their interaction with your product, so qualitative feedback can provide valuable insights into how you have performed.
So, seek out opinions from real people – whether that’s their verdict on a taste test, or their impressions on a new prototype you’re developing.
- Which words are people commonly using to describe their experience of your brand?
- Would they recommend your product to a friend?
Improve your performance
Even though it may look that way on the outside, experiential marketing success doesn’t just hinge on a single pop-up event. As a marketer, you’ll need to play the long game, so your results from this campaign need to inform your next steps. You can only compare past and future outcomes if you have some solid stats to benchmark the effectiveness of your campaign.
- Use the same metrics every time, so that your campaigns can be easily compared.
- Act on past data: focus on improving your weaker areas as identified by the metrics from your last event.
- Try something new. If your results were unsatisfactory last time, why not branch out? For example, you could incorporate one of our photo marketing solutions for your next experiential marketing campaign.
