Strategy means many things to many people. For some, its about the activities that are engineered for the audience to participate in. For others, its bringing the brand to life online. For others still, its about the right events or digital activities to participate in. I submit it’s all of these things and more.

Creating or adopting a strategic framework for the needs of your experience or program is a good place to start. From there, taking time to think about how you will approach each component lays the foundation for success. Here are some tips for creating a strategic framework that will help you rally the troops and march onward toward victory.

1. Clearly articulate and prioritize all objectives. What are you trying to accomplish with the event / experience / program? If you accomplish only one thing, what must it be? Because there are many lieutenants in the work we do, there are also many opinions on what the objectives should be. Try to foster agreement on as few objectives as possible. Honing the list down to no more than 1-3 objectives will ensure your squad focuses on the right things.

2. Think about measurement first. Now that you’ve established your objectives, it’s important to understand if, when and how you’ve accomplished them. Create a measurement strategy that reports on how these objectives are being met. no more, no less. Make sure all officers and troops alike are in agreement on success imperative and the measurement plan before the event / experience / program is launched.

3. Know how your battle contributes to the war effort. Always understand the input and outputs of what you’re doing. What other programs might influence your work? What contribution does your event make to the campaign? Understanding will also help ensure your are focused on the most important things.

4. Take time to get to know the target. Think beyond the demographics and psychographics of audiences. What are their interests? What are their triggers and inhibitors? What emotional and rational needs do they have that your brand can fulfill? This will lay the foundation for relevent experiences and build meaningful relationships.

5. Play to your strengths. Know thyself. Stay on brand and execute those tactics which are most likely to succeed. Apply the 80 / 20 rule for experimental activities and focus on tried and true methods first. Also know your weaknesses and be prepared to overcom them.

6. Survey the battlefield. What else is happening in the marketplace? What are your competitors up to? What socio-economic factors, marketing trends, business challenges, online and offline influencers need to be considered? Knowing the environment in which you are operating can help determine the types of activities executed at right time and place to maximize success.

7. Draft a comprehensive plan of attack. How will you attract an audience? What experiences will motivate them to act on your objectives? How are you representing your brand? What’s the sales strategy? What about follow-up? Promotions? Ensure there are sub strategies to your overarching strategy.

8. Develop contingencies for defeat and victory. Flexibility is key. Know what you will do if all or part of your program begins to fail before the event / experience / program is executed. Alternatively, know what you will do if the work is wildly successful. Sometimes an inability to support success can be more damaging than an outright failure. Make sure you have immediate, quick-strike plans in place as well as intermediate and longer-term ideas in your arsenal.

9. Remember measurement. Measure and diagnose your event / experience / program. Understand success, the degrees to whiich you were successful, and the reasons behind success or failure. Consider what successful tactics can be replicated elsewhere or improved apon. What were the reasons for failure? How can this be prevented next time? Create a plan for continuous improvement so each battle is won with fewer casualties.

Sun Tzu also wrote, “The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” By creating a strategy and calculating the outcomes before you launch your plan, you’ll be able to mitigate failure and drive overwhelming success.

The Art of Experiential Marketing is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

There’s an old adage that states: “Quality, cost, delivery: pick any two.” This means there is a direct relationship between each of these, and businesses can only expect to have a positive outcome of two of the three at any given time. For example, higher quality and delivery speed will increase cost, or lower cost and increased delivery speed will reduce quality, etc.

Experiential marketing has evolved to include face-to-face, virtual, social and other digital marketing tactics as part of a 360 degree relationship between brands and their audiences. With that evolution, how are marketers managing the QCD triangle? In this post, I’ll examine the impact this evolution has made and share some ideas on improving and balancing quality, cost and delivery.

Quality: In a face-to-face environment, this is something we’ve strived for for decades. From speakers, to staff training, to signage and fit and finish of our booth or retail environment, many marketers may feel as if they’ve nailed this one. But what happens when you introduce quality of audience interaction? If you were to survey attendees of your experience, what would they say about the quality of conversation and relationship with your company and your brand? This becomes even more difficult with the advent of virtual events and social media. Platform developers are working feverishly to create the latest and greatest buzz-worthy tools to improve and enhance their virtual and social experiences. At the end of they day, however, it’s not about the platform or the tools, it’s about the engagement and interaction between brands and audiences. I’ve observed many brands who’ve done an adequate job of signposting around the social web, but few engage effectively.

How to improve this? Focus at least as much energy on listening as your brand does on speaking. Engage your audiences in conversations, regardless of tool or platform. Offer true value for your audiences with every engagement. To be relevant to your audiences, you must do relevant things. Also remember that frequency of interaction matters. Too much is just as damaging as too little, but in different ways.

Cost: The albatross of marketers. Everything is just so damn expensive. Marketers have applied procurement, process and penny-pinching to their programs with limited success. Taking a programatic approach via portfolio planning has helped many achieve balance. Virtual events and social media have certainly helped drive the cost of audience engagement down, but at what price? While digital experiences are indeed less expensive, the quality of engagement is far lower than a face-to-face experience. This is not to say virtual and social activities have no value, but should be applied as part of an overall plan to balance out the communications stream with your audiences. Bear in mind hidden costs are everywhere. For example, a virtual event will save on expenses like travel, shipping, drayage, etc, but building a quality experience online can be costly. Also, qualified audiences can be more difficult to attract to virtual events, which is another cost driver.

How to improve this? Understand what the marketing purpose is for each tactic in your portfolio. Apply the right activities for each stage of the pipeline. Monitor and diagnose performance of each and understand the performance relationship between each tactic and it’s contribution to the whole. Deselect or adjust activities which are under-performers and reinvest in those tactics which are driving success. Otherwise, continue to drive down costs using the traditional process, procurement and penny-pinching approach you’ve come to know and love.

Delivery: Through ‘just-in-time’ logisitics, global creative capabilities, streamlined fabrication and decentralized production processes, the speed at which a face-to-face event or experience can be delivered is mind-boggling. The same holds true for virtual experiences with digital sweatshops and pre-packaged “off-the-shelf” digital environments. Often these speedy solutions are of adequate quality, but who wants to be “adequate”? Cost however is a key issue when it comes to speedy delivery. Just because you can develop an experience quickly, doesn’t mean you should.

How to improve this? Sure, having quick-strike weapons in your arsenal which can be deployed as part of a flexible go-to-market strategy is a great idea, but tread carefully. Often marketers look to deploy something quickly when something else is failing. When planning your campaigns, make sure you focus on strategy first, and build a contingency plan for all major foreseeable circumstances, both positive and negative. What about a quick-strike plan that capitalizes on successful implementation, and not just when the world is crashing down around your very expensive campaign that is failing to draw an audience?

I would add just one more, Quantity. This is a holy grail of sorts for marketers. What is the right number, frequency, cadence and type of marketing activities required to meet a desired result? Too often marketers assume their audiences live their lives by a media plan. Now more than ever the way an audience experiences a brand is well out of control of the most well-intended marketer.

How to improve this? Test, test, and when you’re done, test again. Audiences are largely unpredictable. Draw a line in the sand and create a marketing mix that is strategically designed to meet your objectives and address your audiences where they live, work and play, both online and offline. Measure the results against your objectives and change it up, often, too see what works best.

Pick Any Two is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

During virtually every conversation we are attempting to have with our audiences, we are competing with their internal monologue, simultaneous social media conversations, emails, text messages, and other environmental factors.

We are no longer singularly focused. People generally do not live in the moment. Monologues and dialogues have become polylogues and we now live in a world where chaos, distraction and multi-tasking is the norm.

Audiences are harder to reach. People are more difficult to persuade. Competitive advantage is harder to achieve. It is exceedingly difficult to cut through the clutter and get your message out.

As experiential marketers, we are faced with an interesting challenge. Where we were once entirely focused on creating experiences which activated the emotional and rational levers of our audiences from a face-to-face perspective, we now have to account for the distractions of laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices. Additionally, social media has created a powerful back-channel which competes heavily with the experiences we work so diligently to engineer. Instead of contributing the the noise, if we take a targeted approach to engaging our audiences across their communications channels, we will be able to take what many see as an impediment to our success and turn it into an opportunity. Here are some thoughts on how.

Create Indelible Experiences. If you want to keep attendees engaged, the most important thing you can do is create experiences which naturally capture and hold their attention. Effective experiences tell a story, include attendee interaction, are authentic, on brand and immersive. These experiences engage the senses and activate both emotional and rational triggers of your audience. For more information check out Are You Experienced?.

Drive And Engage In The Conversation. Marketers too often take a broadcast approach to their messaging. We create environments, graphics, pictures, signs, videos, etc. to propagate our message. “Here are the features and benefits of our product,” Here is why you want to do business with our company” and the like. Instead of approaching audiences with answers, try using questions to tell your story: “What is your biggest challenge?” “What do you think about…?”, etc.  Spending some time in your audience’s shoes and understanding their needs will help build relationships based on trust. At an event it means more than setting up a booth. It requires speaking sessions, networking activities, etc. Online it means more than setting up a Facebook page or Tweeting about your products. It requires listening and engaging with audiences. Becoming an integral part of the conversation will ensure long-term brand success.

Create Social Destinations. Use Blogs, FaceBook pages, Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, Flickr, branded social networks, etc. If you build them, they might come. Think outside of the event in terms of audience, content and relationships. Building the channels and the content is just the first step. It’s critical you stay engaged and keep content fresh. These platforms are excellent for participating in the conversation. Make sure you do. Listening, reacting, commenting, etc. is the purpose of social media. Spend 20% of your time creating content and 80% of your time engaging the community. Social media destinations and audience engagement should be executed before, during and after the event.

Facilitate The Backchannel. Concerned about the lack of control you might have over brand perception in the social space? Participate! Research where your audiences are most likely to engage in social media and help facilitate and influence the conversation. Create official #hashtags. Use the social destinations suggested above. Create content that encourages audience participation. Ask provocative questions that rally your communities around an idea. Consider yourself the grand facilitator of all things directly or indirectly related to your brand both face-to-face and online. Use your physical presence to drive conversation into the backchannel – without distracting audiences from the live event. This is an important point. You’ve spend a great deal of time, money and effort to build a face-to-face audience. Engage and captivate your audience. Any social media activities should be additive and complement your efforts by addressing audiences beyond the attendee, not pull your attendees out of the face-to-face discussion, but be omnipresent.

Create A Mobile Playground. The most persuasive distraction brands compete with during a face-to-face event is the mobile device. Attendees are constantly checking email, texting, using mobile applications, social media and otherwise. Again, being omnipresent is an opportunity to engage attendees wherever their attention may be focused. Capture attendee mobile contact information at registration. Send emails and texts to attendees during the event to keep them engaged. Consider creating branded mobile applications that tie into the subject matter or theme of the event that engage attendees. Mobile games an sweepstakes are another approach. Use third-party mobile social media applications like Foursquare, Gowalla or Yelp to build interesting and engaging campaigns or mashups to keep audiences interested and immersed in your brand’s message.

Immerse Audiences In Virtual Experiences. In my earlier post Six Things to Consider on the Way to the New World, I talked about what a virtual event is, and what it is not. Virtual events are powerful tactics indeed. Consider adopting hybrid models to complement your physical events. Hybrid events bolster attendance, increase access to content, extend the life of a physical event, leverage and reuse assets, increase reach, drive buzz, enhance attendee value and improve ROI. Again, the idea is to be omnipresent within the community and to own the conversation wherever possible.

Always Look To The Future. Use RFID to track attendees areas of interest and behaviors or to personalize experiences. Consider using holography or augmented reality to create experiences that truly immerse and engage attendees in your experiences. Be forward leaning in your approach to investigating and adopting new technologies in your program. a good resource for ideas here is TED. Check it out!

These are just a few innovative ideas to motivate and activate your audiences. The key is to create physical and virtual environments and activities which attract, capture, engage and build lasting relationships with your audiences. Be on brand, be omnipresent and most importantly, be valuable.

Have other thoughts? Please share!

Embrace The Chaos! Experiential Marketing In The Real World is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

Think of it this way. People build perceptions through five lenses: emotion, reason, knowledge, personality and experience. It is exceedingly difficult to effectively address these through logos, signage and the like. To truly build a positive brand impression requires the building of trust and relationships.

Here are 13 ideas to help you build your brand through broader and deeper audience engagement at your events.

Everything Matters: Every touch point with your audience has the opportunity to make or break their perception of your brand as well as your relationship with them. Take nothing for granted.

Booth Layout: The look and feel of your booth is a good starting point. Remember, what’s not in your booth is just as important as what is. Keep it open, inviting and comfortable.

Signage: Use messaging as a strategic weapon. Adopt a messaging hierarchy for your presence. Consider what your messaging strategy is, and what high level and detailed messaging you will include to draw people into your booth and entice conversation with your staffers. Hint: you don’t have to tell the whole story from across the convention center. Also, the amount of messaging, fontography, and integration with pictures and video is critical. All elements need to work together simply and seamlessly, to tell your story. You have 3-5 seconds. Go!

Experiences: In my earlier post, Are You Experienced? I discuss some tips on how to turn your event into an experience. Given that one of the key foundations of building perception is experience, you should really focus on this one. Make your events authentic, engaging, interactive and immerse your audience and you’ll go a long way to bolstering brand perception.

Storytelling: Use case studies and stories to build positive brand impressions from an audience perspective. Using guest speakers on panels or use video both at the event and online to draw your audiences in and show how your brand addresses their needs and makes them a hero in their own story. Check out Storytelling to learn more.

Trained Demonstrators: It is true that no one in your company knows your products better than the folks who created them. It is also true that delivering demonstrations based on audience needs (not product features and benefits) presenting ideas effectively in a public forum and engaging audiences in meaningful conversations, is a skill in it’s own right. If your staff is trainable (meaning they could pass as a professional speaker or demonstrator) by all means train them. If not, use them as company and product experts after the pros energize, excite and engage the crowd.

Educational Sessions: Whether you are participating in a third-party tradeshow, conference or planning a proprietary event, it’s important to add value to your audiences. In many cases this means offering some sort of education. The tracks you participate in, the type of knowledge you impart, the number of sessions, the quality of the speakers and the breadth and depth of content you provide all say something about your brand. Also, keep in mind that any educational session should be designed so it is entertaining, easily digestible and shareable beyond the session itself. Think about how audiences will use this content in social media.

Speaking Opportunities: Like educational sessions, speaking session should be treated as critical for appealing to the emotion, reason and knowledge lenses of your audiences. Work with show producers to secure the most prominent speaking session(s) possible whether through purchasing sponsorships, or building such a reputation in the marketplace for excellence, the mere presence of your rockstar executive will draw crowds to the event.

Private Meetings: The most important audiences are those who  align themselves with your organization. This is true for prospects, customers, and loyal advocates. Holding special off-floor activities just for them will make them feel special and validate their affinity with your brand. Make sure these activities are of the highest quality,  valuable, entertaining and allow for networking with peers.

Audience Generation: Aside from “just do it,” remember the type and frequency of touches you have with your potential attendees before the event creates an important brand perception. Here you have an opportunity to show you care about these audiences, which activates emotional triggers.

Promotion: Although niche themes for your event can be fun and all, try to resist the temptation of going way off brand. Whatever promotions, gameshows, sweepstakes, giveaways, contests, booth themes, etc. you choose, they should be first and foremost designed to add real value to your audiences. Secondly, they should be aligned with your core brand values and messaging. The promotion should never outweigh the prominence of your brand. here’s a simple trick. Try saying the promotion name with your competitors brand and message as part of the slogan. If it works, it’s not for you.

Follow-Through: The speed and authenticity of your follow-up activities with your audiences after the event also have a tremendous impact on brand perception. make sure you have a plan for how to manage hot, warm and cold leads after the event. Ensure any information captured on site about the audience is shared with the sales or field staff responsible for post-event contact strategies. Audiences should be contacted as close to immediately after the event as possible, or they will shop your competition, and you have lost an opportunity to build deep, meaningful relationships, not to mention negatively impacted your return on investment.

Social Media Integration: Think beyond the event in terms of audience, content and relationships. Social media activities and audience engagement should be planned for and executed before, during and after the event. An event is a point in time, a relationship lasts far longer. Make sure you participate where your audiences are already congregating. Do your research. It may not be where you think.

An event is the best place for audiences to look a company in the eye and become immersed in a ‘brand experience’.  Second to this is the pervasiveness of the digital channel in providing interactive ‘brand experiences’ for many audiences. Outside of events, digital marketing provides an experience which engages audiences in a two way conversation with a brand. This often leads to a transaction that is immediately measurable. However, this transaction is far less indelible than a face-to-face conversation which helps build a long term relationship based on shared experiences, a mutual exchange of value, and the building of trust. You may meet your mate on Match.com, but (hopefully) you won’t marry them until you have built a face-to-face relationship.

Have other ideas for building your brand through events and experiences? Please share!

Building Brand Through Event Marketing is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0