Do You Know What Matters to Your Customers?

By John Hagerman

Engaging customers in thought-provoking, personal, sensory ways builds connections, communities and brand loyalty far deeper than any other form of marketing. Instead of simply telling people about the features and benefits of your products, or the values your company believes in, experiential and cause marketing allows them to experience it for themselves.

Experiential marketing might be as simple as creatively putting actual product in the hands of customers in the venues where they live their lives – near the office, at the bus stop, or at your kid’s soccer game. Or, it might be as big as sponsoring a racecar and holding a contest that allows product users to imagine themselves driving the car (and one lucky customer actually getting to do it!) It could be 50 concerts in 50 states on the same day. Or it could be launching extreme sporting events, or driving a lawn tractor coast-to-coast. Whatever the approach, the experiential marketing we help you develop will be about letting your customers experience your brands in their lives, or imagining what their lives might be like if they were part of a community that loved your brand.

Cause marketing marries corporate branding and marketing with a cause or nonprofit organization, but it should do more. Great cause marketing is about discovering ways to express the values you, your company, your employees, your customers and your community, believe in through your brand and it’s connections to a cause or organization. It’s about more than printing a colored ribbon on your packaging. Discovering your story helps you uncover the values you hold most dear and cause marketing helps you express those values in the community in ways that have a positive impact on your communities…and help you grow your brand. Nobody ever said doing good couldn’t be profitable, too!

 

If you are yet to be convinced of the value of doing good to do good business, then you owe it to yourself, your employees, and your communities, to check out the Edelman Good Purpose Study. (Edelman is the largest PR firm in the world).