NEWS & UPDATES

May 1, 2008 In By Advent

Experiential Marketing Offers a Powerful Alternative to Traditional Media

It was dif­fi­cult for the Wall Street Jour­nal to write this head­line:  Newspaper-Circulation Drop Sharp­ens (click here for the arti­cle).  The arti­cle describes how the only and largest gains in the sec­tor were from USA Today (+0.27%) and The Wall Street Jour­nal (+0.35%) {Whew, they made it!}.  Note the zero and dec­i­mal points in these percentages–hardly some­thing that would ener­gize the share­hold­ers.  The arti­cle sug­gests that these trends are “a sign that the migra­tion of read­ers online may be pick­ing up speed.”  There was no infor­ma­tion in the arti­cle to sup­port this claim.  The New York Times, whose cir­cu­la­tion is down (-3.85%), announced in Feb­ru­ary that it was cut­ting 100 jobs. Mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions are also down (click here for the arti­cle).  

I do agree that peo­ple are get­ting their infor­ma­tion in alter­na­tive ways these days.  Add to this fact that cus­tomers are exposed to at least (the counts vary) 3,000 mar­ket­ing expo­sures per day. Tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing media as we know it is dying.  If com­pa­nies have really deep pock­ets then by all means they should invest mar­ket­ing dol­lars in tra­di­tional media.  But for the major­ity of us, our mar­ket­ing must actu­ally reach our audi­ence pro­duc­tively and effectively–not hope to reach our audience. 

A study released last week at the Expe­ri­en­tial Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit points out that top mar­ket­ing exec­u­tives are faced with deci­sions of where to invest lim­ited and flat bud­gets.  The study sug­gests that expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing, espe­cially event-based mar­ket­ing, con­tin­ues to rise as an advanced dis­ci­pline within the mar­ket­ing mix.  The study con­tin­ues that if new funds are avail­able to these mar­ket­ing exec­u­tives that most will invest the incre­men­tal funds in expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing over other media. 

The ben­e­fits of expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing are clear.  If the expe­ri­ences are planned prop­erly, their impact is more eas­ily mea­sured and audi­ences are more engaged in unclut­tered, mem­o­rable, emo­tional, encoun­ters.  Expe­ri­ences shorten the tra­di­tional sell­ing cycle and pro­duce greater word of mouth results and a larger num­ber of brand advo­cates.  You can down­load a copy of the expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing study right here.

Authored By Advent

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