Advertising agencies need to market themselves just like any other company. And while advertising your company through traditional channels may seem like the safest bet – after all, it’s what you do for a living – we’d like to argue that experiential marketing may be a better investment.

Here are the three big-picture reasons we believe experiential marketing is an ideal way for your advertising agency to meet its marketing goals:

1. Experiential marketing will allow you to put the skills you have in-house – creativity, access to traditional and new media, an ability to focus in on goal and outcomes – to good use.
2. It will show you’re keyed into market trends, which is something your customers want to know
3. Experiential marketing is still relatively rare among B2B and service-based companies. That puts you at an advantage over your competition.

We’ll explore each of these points in more depth below.

Experiential marketing lets you to advantage of your in-house assets

Experiential marketing requires creativity, connections and a laser focus on goals. Those are things your agencies has in spades, and that puts you in a powerful position to plan a better-than-average activation.

Live or participation marketing is so common today that consumers are much less likely to stop by a run-of-the-mill event (just as they’re much less likely to watch an ad that presents the same old thing). But they still love having interesting, meaningful experiences – perhaps even more so than in the past. If your creative team can dream up an event that’s unlike anything consumers have seen before, they won’t be able to resist you.

Consumers are the most drawn to activations that offer a meaningful experience, but they also like events that have some connection with current trends. The folks at your agency are likely up on the hot television shows, online games, movies, celebrities and books. Use that knowledge to connect your event with the people and entertainment choices your target market finds irresistible.

When consumers participate in your highly creative or timely activation, they’ll know your agency will bring those same attributes to the work you do for them. That sends an extremely powerful message to potential new customers.

We’ll add one note of caution here: Just because you have lots of creatives on your team doesn’t mean you can skip hiring an experiential marketing agency to help you with campaign. We’re willing to bet you cringe when your customers come up with their own ad ideas because they don’t really know what they’re doing. They understand their company and their business, which is vital, but they come up short when it comes time to execute their vision.

The same is true in this case (although we promise never to cringe at your ideas). A good experiential marketing agency knows the current trends and “do’s and don’ts” in their industry. Armed with that information, they’ll take your smart ideas and mold them into a successful event that’s consistent with industry best practices.

Experiential marketing lets you take advantage of MORE of your in-house assets

Experiential marketing works best when you can leverage it to secure traditional and new media stories. This spreads your message far beyond the event itself. As an advertising agency, we suspect you have great connections with traditional media sources. Use them to your advantage. You can also use your in-depth knowledge of social and new media channels to come up with interesting ways to share your story online.

Besides creativity and connections, successful experiential marketing campaigns require a strong focus on the company’s desired goals. You can put on the world’s greatest event, but if it doesn’t deliver what your brand needs (or you have no way of measuring the outcomes), it doesn’t do you much good.

Folks in advertising understand the importance of tracking ROI and other concrete measurements that demonstrate success. Your ability to stay focused on your goals gives you a much better chance of actually achieving them.

Experiential marketing demonstrates that you’re in touch with marketing trends

Experiential marketing plays a big role in the modern marketing mix. Data from the EventTrack survey, the only ongoing study that tracks information about experiential marketing, shows that companies have increased their spending on this tactic every single year. In 2014, that increase was 5.4 percent; in 2015, it was 6.1 percent.

Why are so many Fortune 1000 companies investing in experiential marketing? According to the EventTrack survey, they see it as a way to help them increase brand awareness (81 percent), increase sales (79 percent), and generate leads (50 percent). Nearly 50 percent said they saw an ROI of between 3:1 and 5:1 with recent experiential marketing events.

These are all good things for your company, but experiential marketing will have another benefit for you. Much like potential customers want to know you’re keeping up with consumer trends that can help them appeal to their customers, they want to know that you’re on the cutting edge of industry trends. This will demonstrate that you are.

Experiential marketing is still a new frontier for B2B and service-based companies

Experiential marketing is huge with B2C companies, but it still has a smaller footprint among B2B companies (and service-based companies, for that matter). Use that to your advantage! When you go to business networking events, conferences, trade shows or other events, employ an experiential marketing activation at your booth. You’ll draw way more visitors than your competitors. You’ll also create stronger ties with the consumers you interact with, which will help with lead generation and other goals.

Now that your advertising agency is sold on experiential marketing, one of your first steps toward planning your first activation is finding the perfect experiential marketing agency. Consider Factory 360 your first stop on that journey. We’ve been planning experiential marketing activations since before the trend really caught on. As a result, we have a deep knowledge of industry best practices. We also have a long track record of delivering results. Contact us today to learn why Factory 360 should be your experiential marketing partner.