Experiential marketing is effective, which is why so many businesses have finally gotten on board with this strategy. But, this does not mean that every experiential marketing activation will be a success. Some marketers make costly mistakes when planning an event—especially if this is their first experiential marketing activation. Here’s a look at some of the common mistakes that could affect the outcome of your event:

Trying to Make Everyone Happy

Every experiential marketing event should be tailored to fit the needs of a specific audience. Sometimes, this means brands must tailor the event to fit a segment of their target audience instead of trying to target the entire audience at once. For example, let’s say a brand’s audience consists of both college students and middle-aged adults. If the event is being held on a college campus, the brand should only target their college student audience. Targeting one demographic allows the brand to refine their campaign and perfect the event since they can focus solely on the wants and needs of this segment of their audience. If the brand attempted to target their entire audience with one event, neither group of customers would have a memorable experience since they do not have the same wants or needs.

It’s perfectly fine to plan an event for a segment of your market instead of trying to include everyone. There’s no need to feel as if you are prioritizing or ignoring one segment of the market simply because you are creating a campaign designed for a specific group of customers.

Failing to Train the Brand Ambassadors

The brand ambassadors you hire for your event will be the face of your brand. These are the people who will determine whether or not guests leave the event with a favorable impression of your brand. For these reasons, it’s incredibly important to thoroughly train brand ambassadors prior to the event.

The brand ambassadors should know how to draw guests in, relate to them, and teach them about your company’s products or services. They should understand the mission of your company, who you are trying to sell to, and the goals of the event. Be sure to quiz all of the brand ambassadors before the event to ensure they retained the information presented to them during training.

If you don’t make the effort to train brand ambassadors, the event will not be a success. All it takes is one bad interaction with a brand ambassador to lose a customer’s business.

Underestimating How Long it Takes to Plan an Event

A lot of marketers underestimate how long it takes to plan an experiential marketing event. As a result, they end up rushing through the planning process and hosting a lackluster event that does not meet their guests’ expectations. When working on a tight schedule, marketers may not have the time to thoroughly train brand ambassadors, create buzz about the event on social media, or brainstorm creative ways to make the event more interesting. It doesn’t matter whether this is the first or five hundredth experiential marketing event you’ve planned—give yourself plenty of time to put it together.

Forgetting to Plan For the Worst Case Scenario

In a perfect world, everything will run smoothly at your event. But unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, so marketers need to plan for the worst case scenario. Are you hosting the event at an outdoor venue? If so, you will need to figure out what you will do in the event of a rainstorm. Will you need to connect to the Wi-Fi at the venue? If so, you need to have a back-up plan in case the Wi-Fi is not working.

No one wants to think that everything will go wrong on the day of the event, but it’s smart to plan ahead just in case it does. If you don’t prepare, a minor issue could disrupt the entire event and create an unpleasant experience for guests.

Not Incorporating Social Media

Experiential marketing and social media go hand-in-hand, so don’t make the mistake of forgetting about social media when planning your event. Social media can be used prior to the event to promote the event, answer guests’ questions about the event, and connect with influencers.

Social media can be used during the event as well. Guests should be encouraged to share photos and videos taken at the event with their followers. In fact, the experience you have created for your guests should be so memorable that they want to share it with their followers.

After the event, marketers should use social media to share their own content from the event and thank everyone for attending. Follow-up surveys can also be distributed through social media to gauge how guests felt about the experience. Without this channel, it would be much more difficult to communicate to everyone at once.

Using social media before, during, and after an event can amplify a brand’s reach. Don’t make the mistake of forgetting to incorporate it into your next experiential marketing event.

Misunderstanding How Experiential Marketing Works

Some marketers make the mistake of thinking that experiential marketing is a tactic that should be implemented several times a year. But, this is not the right way to think of experiential marketing. The goal of experiential marketing is to create memorable interactions between brands and consumers. This is what consumers want and it’s what drives sales and loyalty. Therefore, marketers should strive to create these interactions every time they launch a marketing campaign, not just when they are planning a large experiential marketing event. Don’t think of experiential marketing as another marketing tactic—think of it as the foundation of your entire marketing strategy.

These are just a handful of the many mistakes that inexperienced marketers can make when planning an experiential marketing event. To avoid making costly mistakes, trust the experts at Factory 360. Call today to discuss your marketing needs!