Engagement marketing

Engagement marketing, sometimes called 'experiential marketing', 'event marketing', 'on-ground marketing', 'live marketing', 'participation marketing', 'Loyalty Marketing', or 'special events' is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumers and invites and encourages them to participate in the evolution of a brand or a brand experience. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs, developing a relationship with the brand.Think of a salesperson who walks up to you in a store. You tell him thanks, you're okay, you're just looking. But he hovers and looms, finds ways to insert himself into your activity, and is a general annoyance. That's what typical marketing feels like: intrusive and disruptive. Engagement Marketing is the opposite. It's a salesperson who hangs back and engages you if/when you need help. Who can sense what you want to do, and help you arrive at that decision. Who will contact you directly with exclusive sales information, if—and only if—you request it. Engagement Marketing, done well, means connecting with audiences who want to hear from you, in relevant, meaningful, interesting ways. If you can pull that off, everything changes.odern consumers are hard to pin down; they're constantly in motion—traversing different spaces, utilizing different media, and as always, experiencing a range of different thoughts and feelings throughout any given day ... leverage the existing momentum of target consumers. By doing so, we can ... guide them where we want them to go—with minimum waste and maximum efficiency. Engagement marketing, sometimes called 'experiential marketing', 'event marketing', 'on-ground marketing', 'live marketing', 'participation marketing', 'Loyalty Marketing', or 'special events' is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumers and invites and encourages them to participate in the evolution of a brand or a brand experience. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs, developing a relationship with the brand. Consumer engagement is when a brand and a consumer connect. According to Brad Nierenberg, experiential marketing is the live, one-on-one interactions that allow consumers to create connections with brands. Consumers will continue to seek and demand one-on-one, shareable interaction with a brand. Experiential marketing is a growing trend which involves marketing a product or a service through experiences that engage the customers and create emotional attachment to the product/service. Physical and interactive experiences are used to reinforce the offer of a product and make customers feel as if they are part of them. Experiences are positively related to customer's attitudes, mood and behaviours. They also represent a means through which a company can gain competitive advantage by differentiating itself from competitors. To achieve success, an experience should be engaging, compelling and able to touch the customer's senses and capture his/her loyalty. There are many aspects which differentiate traditional marketing from the experiential one. First, experiential marketing focuses on providing sensory, emotional, cognitive and rational values to the consumers. Second, experiential marketing aims to create synergies among meaning, perception, consumption and brand loyalty. Furthermore, experiential marketing requires a more diverse range of research methods in order to understand consumers. Smith has developed a six-step process to develop an effective experiential branding strategy. The first step includes carrying out a customer experience audit in order to analyse the current experience of the brand. The second step is to create a brand platform and develop a touchpoint with customers. The following step includes designing the brand experience; coordinating the brand's people, products and processes against the brand proposition. The next steps involve communicating the brand proposition internally and externally. The last step consists of monitoring performance in order to ensure that the brand is meeting its objectives. Nowadays, experiential marketing is getting more technologically advanced and personalised. The wide spread of the Internet and the increasing competition among online retailers has led to the rise of virtual experiential marketing (VEM). VEM uses the Internet and its various channels to create an enriched and engaging experience by using visual and audio tools. VEM relies on an electronic environment that engages customers and arouses their emotional responses to create an unparalleled experience and consequently capture their loyalty. The elements which characterize virtual experiential marketing are: sense, interaction, pleasure, flow and community relationship. Furthermore, affective involvement has been identified as a key factor which affects online purchase intention. Thus, the online experience must emphasize an emotional appeal to the consumer in order to build purchase intention. A model to create high impact virtual customer experience has been developed by the management consultancy, A.T. Kearney. The four basic steps are: Engagement measures the extent to which a consumer has a meaningful brand experience when exposed to commercial advertising, sponsorship, television contact, or other experience. In March 2006 the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) defined Engagement as 'turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context'. The ARF has also defined the function whereby engagement impacts a brand: According to a study by Jack Morton Worldwide, 11 out of 14 consumers reported preferring to learn about new products and services by experiencing them personally or hearing about them from an acquaintance. Meanwhile, a report by The Event Marketing Institute and Mosaic found that 74% of consumers say that engaging with branded event marketing experiences makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted.