ROI – Return On Investment – is absolutely, positively the most important thing to any client. It’s what prompts all their decisions and governs their commissioning, buying and campaign behaviour. Yes, it’s that important to them. And, frankly, who can blame them?
However, there is – of course – one small problem with ROI…and that’s how you measure it. That’s not to say that advertisers and campaign directors have been (or are) ignorant of what constitutes success but rather that, traditionally, it’s been very difficult to find reliable figures to formulate results from.
If this is a tad confusing, let us explain.
A general rule for ROI takes into account reach, audience figures and actions resulting from viewing campaign advertising (and completeness of the customer experience – but more of that later). And this is where the problem start for the traditional advertising forms.
Initially (using the factors listed above) it will be possible to track the campaign – a TV advert, for example, will have available figures relating to the viewing numbers at the time of its launch on the channel it airs on. Similarly, a print ad will have available figures for the number of papers sold that day. So far so good for the reach results.
But moving ahead to audience figures we start to encounter problems. Figures relating to reach have a direct bearing on actual audience figures – or so most people would have you believe given that it makes their lives easier! But this is not, in fact, the case and asking a few simple questions allows you to see the flaws that can make a massive difference to your campaign.
Firstly, your ad may be airing and TV figures may be telling you exactly how many TVs are on…but how many people are actually watching? Distribution figures will tell you have many papers with your ad sold…but how many people are actually reading your ad? The simple fact is that there’s no way of knowing. The best that can be done is to guess – and that’s exactly what marketers do. They may become good at it with experience, but it’s still guessing.
This simple fact (worrying too if you’re a client!) also has a knock on effect; with a lack of proper data relating to genuine viewing figures it becomes impossible to tell just how many actions (responses to your advertising) are actually coming from your campaign. And that’s at a basic level, on a wider scale you have no way of determining which parts of your campaign are working, which aren’t and how to compensate for this.
In short, traditional media leaves you high and dry when it comes to…well…actually knowing how your campaign is doing and how you can improve it. Not good eh?
By now you’re probably asking yourselves why on earth we’re telling you this. After all, letting you know that most of the marketing industry runs on little more than generalised predictions and hunches can’t be a good thing can it? Well, as a matter of fact it can – simply because it throws into even more stark relief just how effective experiential marketing can be at all levels.
Experiential marketing, through its use of extensive and in-depth market research, can tell clients where and how to launch their campaign to give it the best chance of success. Our research into footfall, target market and their general likes and dislikes – using actual data collected from a wide test group and not guesses – will provide a client with hard facts upon which to build their campaign framework.
But this is only a start. Experiential marketing recognises the essential need for accurate and contemporary data. All activity can be accompanied by immediate research allowing the client to see exactly where they stand at any given moment.
Furthermore, this kind of data acquisition allows for extreme flexibility not present in either traditional advertising campaigns or, indeed, in standard market research work. Broad questions targeted at wide demographics to specific minutiae aimed solely at a few can be factored into a campaign with almost no notice whatsoever, allowing both the campaign directors and the clients to observe the current state of play, assess their standing and adapt to the results in real-time.
All this leads to a continued sense of ownership and control in relation to a campaign – a sense entirely at odds with current print and media operations where, once a campaign is “released” it’s very much regarded as unalterable and out of the marketers’ hands.
However, data gathering, though hugely important, is not the only difference between standard campaigning and experiential campaigning related to ROI. As we just mentioned, when a standard campaign is launched there is very little that can be done for it from then on…well, when we – as experiential marketers – launch a campaign it’s only just the beginning.
The face-to-face and totally interactive nature of our work means that we have a direct and immediate influence on how the campaign and brand work. Their success is, to a great extent, based on how we represent them.
Through interaction with the client’s target market we can educate the consumer, demonstrate the product and encourage interaction with the brand. And, by meeting the brand audience face to face we are able not only to provide immediate answers to their questions – thus removing their reasons not to buy – but also to give your brand a real, sympathetic and knowledgeable face…another thing that a billboard or TV advert cannot.
In short, all the aspects of sales that traditional campaigns cannot begin to duplicate (but are, by their very nature, trying to encourage) we carry out as a matter of course. TherE, on the ground, during the campaigning, one consumer at a time.
The hugely involved and personal nature of experiential campaigning allows us to provide a staggeringly complete customer experience.
To look at it another way, the client invests money in a campaign. This campaign seeks through traditional or experiential methods to affect the potential customer and influence their purchase. The resultant experience for the customer gives another measurement of ROI depending on the depth and completeness of campaign. The more complete the customer experience, the higher the ROI.
To add up all the evidence and put it into one single sentence; Experiential marketing provides a Return On Investment across the board that standard marketing methods simply cannot.
A bold statement, but one we’ve proved can be backed up.