When it comes to growing brand awareness, loyalty, and revenue, no other marketing channel compares to the impact of brand experiences. In fact, experiential is one of the most effective ways to influence these objectives and power true brand growth. 

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But the real challenge comes from quantifying success, and more specifically, getting the right data to show a holistic view of your impact. Many teams want to zero in only on the impact consumer events and brand experiences have on revenue, but the truth is that it’s often much bigger than revenue alone. Brands need to look at success much more holistically in order to show the full picture of their impact and make the case for continued or increased experiential marketing investment. 

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So how do you take a more holistic approach to measuring experiential ROI?

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It starts by thinking about your goals for experiential; after all, if you’re looking to show your return on the investment you’re making in in-person events and experiences you first have to understand why you’re investing in these channels in the first place. 

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We typically see brands investing in experiential marketing to influence three objectives:

• Increase awareness & consumer engagement
• Improve brand perception and loyalty
• Grow revenue
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Depending on which of these you’re focused on, you’ll have different measurements that will paint a picture of success.

Increase Brand Awareness & Consumer Engagement

To start a relationship with a brand, a consumer must first know it exists. Experiential marketing gives you a great way to meet your consumers where they’re at, introducing them to your brand in a powerful way that creates lasting connections and creates recall. 

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“Experiential marketing is about meeting the customer, especially a new customer, in a context where they will be," REI’s former Chief Marketing Officer Vivienne Long shared in our most recent episode of The Experience Exec.

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A good relationship starts with a first impression. Delivering unique and memorable brand experiences to your consumers where they are not only helps you reach those consumers to grow awareness, but it sets a solid foundation for future engagement that can have a lasting impact on other goals like improving loyalty and growing revenue. 

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The key to showing the impact your strategy has on awareness and engagement is answering these questions: 

• How many people did I reach via experiential programs? 
• How many of those were new to our brand? 
• How are these people then spreading our brand message? 

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To learn more about which metrics to track to accurately quantify the impact of your strategy on brand awareness and engagement, check out The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Experiential Success. 

How POPLIFE Increased Awareness and Engagement 

POPLIFE is an experiential agency that worked with their craft mezcal brand client to create and produce a series of festival activations. During these festival activations, they were able to successfully grow their database by using AnyRoad to capture valuable information from consumers onsite. After the festival series wrapped, the agency was able to show how they impacted client’s awareness goals with a 50% growth in the number of new contacts engaged. 

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Armed with more information about who their consumers are and what they care about most, POPLIFE empowered their spirit client to understand consumers on a deeper level and therefore, more effectively tailor their experiential strategy to their target audience. 

Improve Brand Perception & Loyalty

It’s not enough just to reach new consumers, brands must make sure their experiences and events leave a lasting, positive impression on those that they reach. Brand perception and loyalty are critical for long-term brand success. After all, if your consumers have a positive view of your brand based on an experience they attend, they are more likely to purchase your products and advocate for you, influencing those around them for a network effect. 

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Brand experiences provide a powerful way for you to turn your audience from people who are passively aware of your brand or have shown an initial interest in engaging further into full-blown loyal superfans. And so as you’re thinking about which KPIs to put in place in order to effectively show the return on your experiential investment, you can’t forget about key brand perception and loyalty metrics. These will tell you: 

• How people perceive your brand and its values
• Whether they are likely to purchase your products over your competitors 
• Whether they will advocate for your brand to amplify the impact of your efforts

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To learn more about which metrics to track to accurately quantify the impact of your strategy on brand perception and loyalty, check out The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Experiential Success. 

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How Diageo Improved Brand Perception and Loyalty

Diageo’s Johnnie Walker is the world’s best-selling Scotch whisky, available in over 180 countries. You might be familiar with one of their most beloved experiences, the Journey of Flavour, where fans who visit their brand home can take an immersive tour into the brand’s history and get a specialized tasting based on their flavor preferences. 

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By offering this immersive experience and personalizing the tasting experience based on their guests’ preferences, Diageo was able to improve consumers' perception of their brand, seeing a 16-point increase in NPS after guests participated in their experience. 

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Grow Revenue

In the end, the ultimate goal of any brand is to grow revenue. Experiential marketing provides one of the most impactful ways for brands to do that – although it’s not always easy to see the immediate impact of events and experiences on revenue. That’s because experiential’s influence on revenue is typically more indirect. 

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For this reason, many experiential teams are challenged with getting internal stakeholders bought into this channel and justifying the investment in experiential campaigns. The key to showing the impact of experiential on revenue growth is to show the full picture, clearly walking stakeholders through… 

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Here’s how we think about it – driving an impact in these areas will ultimately help you see sustainable, long-term revenue growth: 

• Increase awareness and engagement: Consumers won’t spend their money with you if they don’t know who you are, so it all starts with using experiential to get in front of your target audience and set the foundation for future purchases. Keeping them engaged and getting in front of your audience regularly through experiences will ensure you’re top of mind when it’s time to make a purchase. 

• Improve brand perception and loyalty: A positive perception of your brand makes all the difference when consumers make buying decisions, and can be the reason they choose your brand over your competitors. Delivering experiences that are tailored to your audience will ensure that consumers walk away feeling good about your brand and more likely to purchase from you post-event. Keeping them engaged through curated experiences will bring them closer to your brand, fostering a new level of loyalty that drives them to purchase again and again and even spread the word about how much they love your brand to their network.

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Of course, there are also some of the short-term wins you’ll want to measure to show your impact on revenue along the way. For example, tracking purchase conversions – how many people attended your event and then went and bought your product – will help demonstrate success almost immediately after your event or campaign. You can get the full list of metrics to track in The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Experiential Success. 

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Unlock the Full Potential of Your Strategy

Measuring ROI is the key to unlocking a world of possibilities, and often, the budget to make those possibilities even bigger. Don’t skimp out on showing the full value that your programs are bringing to your brand; make sure you’re giving stakeholders a complete picture by showing success metrics aligned to your experiential and brand goals. 

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By using goals as guiding lights, you can clearly show the impact of your experiences and tell a stronger story of both short-term and long-term impact of your strategy. 

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Give it a try; work this approach into your campaigns and see how presenting your experiential ROI in this light makes it easier to get stakeholders bought into the value of consumer events and brand experiences. 

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Ready to start showcasing the full picture of your experiential ROI? 

Download The Ultimate Guide for Measuring Experiential ROI to get the full list of metrics to track based on your brand goals and tips for more effectively showcasing the impact of your programs today.

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