In the wake of a new era of marketing and advertising, several companies are claiming to be experiential marketing companies. However, experiential marketing involves multiple strategies including mobile truck tours, site visits, and special events. Businesses those are ready to organize these for another brand should have the resources, experience, and infrastructure to help execute the plans. Most companies that claim to offer event-based marketing services lack the resources, talent, and planning capacity for it. Today, you will come across hundreds of agencies that claim to be event-based marketing experts. How will you know which ones are telling the truth and which ones are just trying to bluff you?
Here is a set of seven questions that will help you find the truth about your engagement marketing team –
- What type of clients have you handled?
You can tell a lot about a company from the clients they have handled. It is always a good idea to ask about the brands they have worked with and the events they have organized. For businesses that are under strict regulations like healthcare and pharmaceuticals, these companies need to understand the dos and the don’ts of the industry. An experienced event-marketing company may be able to help you better than a newbie team, who has to learn the regulations and compliances from scratch. A reputable and trustworthy agency will have the name of their clients on their website. They might also have testimonials from satisfied clients and reviews from participants.
- What kind of tools do you use to measure the success of a live event?
When you are about to invest some amount of your business capital in increasing your reach and improving your customer relations, you need to know for sure that the money will return some profit. While selling a product from an online store, or even offering services from a brick-and-mortar outlet, it is easy to calculate the ROI. How does one calculate the returns on investment? Without the proper tools for monitoring brand activity and customer interactions, any brand will be at a loss when the time comes to justify the investments. To know more about the tools that can measure the effects of live marketing, visit Roots3 Productions experiential marketing agency.
- How do you train your brand ambassadors for the live events?
Brand ambassadors need to receive complete training. They need access to resources, and they need to know the brands inside-out to be able to promote the right message. They need to have experience, tact, and understanding of the target audience. Each brand has some niche requirements. The brand ambassadors should be able to understand these needs before they start working in the field for the new product launch or activation. They are the mediators, who determine how the potential customer will interact with the brand.
- What will be the terms of our partnership?
Each partnership in business is different. Strong relationships in the professional field are necessary for the execution of events. An advertising agency cannot work without the help of its communication team, PR team, client management and services teams. Your partnership will determine what kind of resources you will have access to and what reporting tools your company will have.
- How do you integrate social media and digital techniques to on-ground marketing?
Some companies that falsely claim to be event-based advertising agencies do not usually have the technology necessary to execute a complete campaign. Without the right technique, it is impossible to design an effective event marketing strategy, target the right demographics and monitor the effectiveness of the campaign. Without the integration of digital tech and social media, it is impossible to track the metrics. Apart from the “wow” factor, the technology is necessary to organize the very basics of any integrated campaign experience. Participants in the events are likely to share their experiences on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Without the right monitoring tools, it will be impossible for the brand to perceive the impact of their event.
- What are the core competencies of your agency?
An agency can have one USP or several competencies. Understanding the core skill set will give you an idea of how you can leverage their services for your brand’s publicity. Some agencies are great at networking, while others are great at ideating. Transportation, live shows, set building, creative graphics and venue finding are all parts of the competencies you need to be looking for. An impressive activation requires a little bit of each skill. Taking a look at the agency’s previous projects and the client feedback will give you a clear idea about the different services you can expect from them.
- What kind of clients do you have in your portfolio?
Each agency has a different portfolio and a different set of clients. It is understandable since each agency has a distinct set of core skills. The digital technology, measurement tools and every other resource an event-based marketing firm uses might be different from the other firm. It will determine the course of your advertising campaign or activation campaign, so you need to check the portfolio. If the agency does not have an online profile of its client, you are full liberty to ask for a list to see if they can meet your expectations.
Here is what you should always watch out for
The biggest challenge with experiential marketing is its results are not always measurable. You can quickly find out about their level of expertise by asking for a small activation plan or a strategy of interactions, along with the appropriate metrics measuring tools. There are no quick tests that can give you an insight into the agency’s proficiency or experience, but finding out about the tools they use can help you understand if they have the talent and toolset to measure the immeasurable. The immeasurable refer to some of the metrics that most local agencies fail to track and measure. These require indirect monitoring. They should have the know-how to customize the fundamentals of branding, marketing, and activation. For example – when the objective involves improvement of brand awareness, the method of measuring the interactions and the success level of the campaign has to be unique for your brand.
