22 Mar 10 Reasons Face-to-Face Engagement Will Always Matter in Experiential Marketing
Attention, curiosity, desire, conviction, and action.
These are the 5 basic stages in face-to-face marketing—a technique that 95% of professionals believe are key to successful relationships.
As an experiential marketing agency, EMS understands that face-to-face engagement is the fuel that lights experiential marketing through tactics such as street teams, brand ambassadors, event marketing, product sampling, and consumer engagement. It’s what makes experiential marketing so powerful, memorable, and effective.
Is your company taking advantage of this tried and true method? Let us convince you: here are 10 unparalleled benefits of face-to-face engagements that maximize your experiential marketing programs.
1. Body language and facial expressions
This includes maintaining eye contact, head nodding, touch, fluent speech, pitch variation, and several other factors that can only be portrayed, captured, and interpreted during an in-person interaction. Face-to-face offers a great opportunity to make a positive impact on customers with body language.
2. The power of a handshake
According to Beckman Institute* new neuroscience research states that strangers form a more positive impression of people who offer a handshake when greeting one another.
3. Personality
You can better convey the personality of your company culture while connecting better with the client through developing a personal relationship.
4. Builds trust between the company and its customers
Interacting in person is one of the largest factors when it comes to building trust in any relationship, especially in business. This diminishes hesitation with choosing to invest in your company, product, or service.
5. Builds visibility
Consumers may not have ever experienced a brand like yours before. Though they may not purchase your product or service right when they experience your exhibit/event, you now become a face they have met and connected with in person will be the first brand they go to when needing a product/service in your field.
6. Avoiding misunderstandings
With such a massive surplus of products, services, reviews, opinions, and advertising that exist today, it’s not guaranteed a consumer will take the time to research your product, leaving valuable information unshared. Marketing face-to-face with this consumer allows you to have a conversation about the product, giving you a chance to both explain the product and answer any questions that may arise giving the consumer reliable information directly from the source.
7. Companies can give their consumers a taste of what they’re all about
Any preconceived notions that potential customers could have had could be eliminated by allowing them to test the product or service, thus getting them to say “yes” much quicker.
8. Companies save valuable time and money
With the continuous costs that come with print and internet marketing, face-to-face marketing is a great way to make a first impression with a person more efficiently for a one-time cost.
9. Companies have the chance to express a grateful attitude towards customers
Going above and beyond to show your customers you are thankful for their business goes a long way. When someone’s decision feels valued, they find trust and confidence in the fact that they’d made that decision in the first place, and will continue to support that decision, in turn continuously supporting your company.
10. Stimulates positive word of mouth
As the saying goes, “any publicity is good publicity.” If you create an interesting and exciting face-to-face marketing installation, people will want to talk about their experience. Make it fun and exciting, and something worth sharing on social media! Buzz is enough to get people wondering who you are and what you do.
Companies utilizing experiential marketing understand nearly every consumer will appreciate interacting face-to-face with brands that interest them. It is in those moments consumers’ attention is captured, memorable connections are made and in the long run, gets consumers much closer to that seal-the-deal “yes” that all marketers seek. On its own more effective than social media, digital marketing, print ads, or any other form of traditional advertising, experiential marketing with face-to-face engagement at its core, builds the trust and brand connection consumers and companies desire.