The Four P’s of Experiential Marketing

Assumption: if you’re reading this post you’re probably in marketing and you’ve almost certainly met the concept of the Four P’s before, so I’m not going to recap Marketing 101. What I do want to talk about is how those four P’s change when you hit the road it becomes Experiential Marketing.

We have our own Four P’s and they have to do with the live interaction between a brand and the people the brand touches, the are: Place, People, Problem, Proof.

My official Four P’s of Experiential Marketing have to do with logistics and psychology. At the end of the day, everything circles back to the user experience with your brand out in the field.

Place

The first P is understanding the Place where you are going to be interacting with people.

• How does it operate?
• Who runs it, what’s the management style?
• What is the atmosphere?
• How much space do you have to work in?
• What’s the traffic flow like, do people visit in waves or is it a steady stream?
• Are there locations where people will “pool” like outside of restrooms, food courts, or at checkout?
• What are the logistics of the getting in, setting up, getting out?

Knowing the Place is where you determine how appropriate your activation is for the space. You need to think about the aesthetic of your activation and how it works in the space.  You need to consider what it takes getting equipment, materials, and staff into position. Place is all about logistics, traffic, and “look”.

People

The second P is understand the mindset of the people you are engaging with. Not just through personas and market research about wants/needs, what is their mindset at the venue where you are interacting with them?

• Have they come to shop? Do they have a list and are on mission to get in and get out?
• Are you at a museum with guests in a discovery/learning mindset?
• Are you at a mall where people are browsing and sampling entertainment?
• Are you at a festival where people are there to play and have fun?

The expectation and mindset of the people you are attempting to engage with is a critical piece of information and insight. It impacts how you approach because you need to plan your engagement strategy around that expectation and mindset. It’s hard to lure consumers in to a dry learning activation when they are expecting carnival rides and deep fried maple bacon donuts.

You need to meet people where they are mentally and deliver your value in a format that matches their mindset. In UX terminology: deliver the right content, at the right time, to the right people.

Problem

Let’s go back to marketing 101 for a moment; people don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems. I don’t know about you, but I’m really tired of being marketed to. I’m overloaded with information and marketing. I just want someone to help me solve a problem so I can move on to the next 40 things on my list. I don’t want to listen to how awesome your brand is, I want to know what problem it solves for me and I want to know it in less than 2 sentences.

Finding the problem so you can solve it is pretty easy.

1. Ask
2. Listen
3. Listen closer. Listen for the anxieties and problems two layers below what’s visible

Then you explain how you can solve the problem. The most under utilized element of Experiential Marketing is EQ – emotional intelligence. When you put a Brand Ambassador with strong emotional intelligence out in the field, magic happens.

Proof

No matter what you do, somebody is paying the bills and they want to know that the dollars were spent wisely. How are you proving engagement? How are you proving that you’ve moved the needle? How are you proving Mission Accomplished?

Forget KPI’s for a moment, those are only data markers. What is the long-tail impact of Experiential? It isn’t Brand Awareness. It’s sales figures and behavior changes. Awareness doesn’t mean bupkis if you aren’t impacting behavior. Figure out how you prove that you’re moving the needle and you’re the hero both to the client AND to the customer who you’ve solved a problem for.

I like it when everybody wins, don’t you?