The past 18 months have provided numerous hurdles for organizations large and small, and companies have had to shift their tried and true methods of engaging with the public to drive sales. Various meetings, events, and workspaces went from in-person to digital virtually overnight.
With an emphasis on engagement, these immersive events provide consumers with a true experience they feel a part of instead of a display they simply observe passively. Genuinely engaging with potential consumers at experiential events — whether in-person or virtual — often leads to spikes in sales and social media mentions for brands, which is why they have become even more attractive for business leaders who have never conducted one.
Hosting an event of this caliber, however, can be utterly overwhelming, and many business leaders don't know where to start. This is where an experiential event company can come in and do much of the hard work for you!
Experiential event companies are organizations that handle most of the planning, organizing, strategizing, and implementation on behalf of a company that is hosting an experiential event. Because experiential events are so unlike any other type of event that many businesses have hosted in the past, it's a big risk for brands or event planners to put one on themselves without prior experience.
Working with an experiential event company can help lessen that risk because they have the experience and know-how to successfully create immersive events for consumers in dozens of industries.
These companies help organizations host all kinds of events, including experiential ones, by using advanced strategies and techniques to facilitate networking among professionals and consumers in a fun and memorable way. They also collect numerous data points to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, allowing you to constantly evolve to create even more impactful events for your brand in the future.
Because experiential event companies specialize in unique event strategies and have planned and organized several before, working with an established company is the best way to help your brand ensure that you get the return on investment you're looking for with your experiential event.
You can certainly try to do all of the organizing yourself, but hosting events like this is not as intuitive as other types of event planning. It can take several attempts, and a series of trials and errors, to create an experience that stays with attendees.
Most companies don't have the time or money to experiment on their own in this way, and an experiential event company can actually save your organization substantial time and money by taking out all of the guesswork. When it comes to experiential events, there are a few key aspects that separate the successful from the not-so-successful, including:
The hallmark of experiential events is that they pull the attendees in and give them a sense of involvement throughout the event. This is in sharp contrast to events that consist of only keynote speakers or presentations that force attendees to sit there passively and have little involvement. When attempting to host an experiential event, think about activities or events you have attended in the past that stand out as truly compelling, and attempt to use the elements that most captured and held your attention.
Digital fatigue is a real phenomenon, and most people begin to tune out of digital events in a matter of minutes, especially if they have been working on the computer all day. Most people also don't have hours of extra free time to spend on long in-person events either, which is why your event must emphasize quality over quantity. Give attendees two or three key takeaways at most, and avoid getting bogged down in the attempt to present mountains of information that they likely won't remember anyway.
The best experiential events provide an obvious value for attendees from the get-go, whether they opt to attend in person or online. Your attendees have limited free time to spend at events, so you have to give them an experience they simply cannot get anywhere else. It can be difficult to make attendees feel immersed through digital means, but it is possible to have successful integrated events that greatly benefit both in-person and virtual attendees.
You must ensure that the immersion matches the medium in integrated experiential events, providing different values for those who show up in-person versus digitally. Pulling this off is no easy feat, but integrated events are only expected to grow in the future, so it's imperative to learn how to do this quickly. Integrated events let you reach the widest potential audience, and they can greatly benefit your attendees and company when they are done correctly.
If your company is interested in harnessing the power of experiential events to increase brand awareness, networking opportunities, and sales, working with a team of highly qualified experiential event specialists, like those at IPG, can provide you with the most bang for your buck.
Hosting experiential events is a sizable investment, but having event experts to lean on throughout the whole process increases the odds that your event will provide the return on investment you're looking for.
Contact us today to learn more about who we are, and how we can help your company with all of its event-related needs.