As every experiential marketing veteran knows, it is becoming harder and harder to break through the clutter of marketing “noise” and make an impact with your target audience. While we can discuss the merits of various tactics all day long, there is one approach almost everyone will agree really hits the mark: make a personal connection with your audience. The challenge for most of us is that many brands want “quantity” over “quality”, because it helps amortize the high cost of most experiential programs. During a recent webinar, Matt Lewis, President, Momentum Worldwide, discussed this very subject and stressed the benefits of focusing on a smaller audience to keep the conversion rate high. He mentioned a recent program for his agency, where the first activation had an audience of 500 people and the conversion rate was 3%. They adjusted for the next activation and had 12 people but the conversion rate was 80%. Since the cost of the second activation was much lower than the first one, the ROI was much better for the second event.
We used this “personal connection” strategy in one of our recent programs for Syngenta, a biotechnology company that sells a product to golf courses to keep the grass healthy and green. Instead of trying to make a big splash with some kind of major golf sponsorship, they focused on the people using their product – the course superintendents and their crews.
We built 2 step-van food trucks and hit the road in the mid-west and east coast. Our focus was to connect with these small crews that are the unsung heroes of every golf course. Arriving at the courses around 5:30 AM each morning, we made them breakfast and served coffee and juice. Our audience varied between 6 and 30 people at each stop and we hit 40 locations during the 2-month tour.
This might be the smallest total audience we’ve hit of any tour we’ve managed in 2018, but we made a meaningful impact each day with our target audience. Next time when you want to make a big splash, think small!