It’s all around us, and it’s something that you encounter more than you probably realize. Every time you’re shopping at Costco and try that new salsa sample, or when you give yourself a spray of that new perfume at the department store. The idea behind experiential marketing is pretty simple – when we experience a product, we better understand it and thus are more likely to form a lasting memory of it. And in turn, we’re more likely to purchase it.

Simple, right? It’s a straightforward marketing technique, and one that marketers are turning to more and more to engage potential customers. While traditional advertising (radio, print, television) verbally and visually communicate the brand and product benefits, experiential marketing tries to immerse the consumers within the product by engaging as many other human senses as possible. In this way, experiential marketing can encompass a variety of other marketing strategies from individual sampling, to large-scale guerrilla marketing. It’s easy to see why there are so many different terms for experiential marketing – event marketing, on-ground marketing, live marketing, field marketing, and grassroots marketing, to name a few.

A recent Forbes.com article takes a deeper dive into experiential marketing through an interview with Bharat Rupani, President of Interactions Marketing, an experiential marketing agency and subsidiary of Daymon Worldwide. Rupani explains the term as “work done with retailers and brands to connect directly with shoppers – usually through an event that happens inside a store or externally in the community.”

He gives specific examples of experiential marketing that his company has executed, like a three week long grand opening event at a grocery store in Maryland that featured a flash mob, a custom miniature ice cream truck, a selfie booth, kids craft area, outdoor grilling event, and a number of food sampling events. And Advance Auto Parts’ mobile tour to over 30 automotive events across the nation with a 44 foot RV.

Both events gave customers a memorable experience and engaged them to become a part of the brand experience. So what makes experiential marketing campaigns successful? The people, and the interaction the audience has with those people (and ultimately the product or brand). You obviously want the interaction to be a favorable one and one that will leave the person with a positive impression. For this reason, it’s especially important that you have the right people representing the product or brand during these interactions.

According to Rupani, talent acquisition is the biggest challenge when it comes to experiential marketing. In today’s digital world where face-to-face interactions are dwindling, finding candidates who have a passion for human interaction and personal encounters is difficult. “Personal engagement is an art we must keep alive – it’s upon us to hire and train those who can emote and connect with people,” he added.

With experiential marketing, it’s important to take on a quality vs. quantity mentality and realize that it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. It’s really just about the basics of selling 101 – word of mouth and human interaction. With each interaction you are creating a lasting impression of the product for someone; you’re really just selling through creating the experience for the customer.

While experiential marketing is something that many marketers may overlook in today’s growing world of marketing platforms, Rupani emphasizes that it’s simplistic and “old school” principles are something that other forms of marketing simply cannot compete with. “Ultimately if people try your brand and like it – you’ve made an impact that traditional marketing can’t produce.  With so much focus on technology today, experiential marketing is still the real and organic interaction with a brand that so many of us still enjoy and value.”

Do you have a positive experience in experiential marketing (no pun intended!) that has worked for your business? We would love to hear about it!

To think about how much social media has changed over the past years is almost mind-boggling. Many of us barely remember what life was like before social media blew up; it has become such an integral part of our everyday lives that we already have reached the point where we take for granted how much we rely on it.

At the end of 2015, we talked about what trends to expect in 2016, and just between then and now, things have changed exponentially. In the midst of this change there has been a slew of emerging social platforms that are striving to make their mark in the digital social space. New social sites and apps seem to be popping up faster than you can say “Snapchat.” So among all of the new entries to the field how do we know which ones will take off to become the next Facebook or Instagram? The truth is we don’t know; only time will tell. However, we can make a few predictions based on the direction the social space is currently headed. The following are our predictions for five of the next generation of social platforms.

1. Periscope

To say this live video streaming app has taken off would be an understatement. Within six months of its March 2015 launch, it reached more than 10 million users and continues to grow in leaps and bounds daily. Such live video streaming seems to be where social media is headed. In the commercial world, it allows brands to come across as both transparent and authentic, unafraid to share their true identity.

2. Tuurnt

Following in the footsteps of Snapchat, Tuurnt transforms regular visual posts into social events where participation and contribution from both known contacts and public users is encouraged. Tuurnt offers users the unique ability to reply directly to a video or photo while everyone is watching; it allows users to comment or attach media, which creates a video sequence, called Tuurnt (in essence, an interactive digital chain letter)

3. Yubl

Based in the United Kingdom, this app promises to be the next-generation networking and messaging platform. Just 10 weeks after its launch, Yubl became the most downloaded app in the UK, surpassing Skype, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Periscope. So what makes Yubl different from all the other social messaging apps out there? One word: customization. It gives users a blank canvas to create something entirely from scratch; you can choose a background color, throw in photos and videos from your camera roll move them around, plaster on stickers and change the fonts. This has not yet launched in the United States, but once it does, it’s going to make an impact!

4. Slack

Slack is yet another social messaging platform. It is focused on team-centric messaging and group chat outlets and allows for integration with a multitude of other services and programs. With the evolution of social messaging platforms making the shift from single thread messaging groups, to essentially mini social networks, if Slack continues to evolve and shift with the tastes of social consumers, it will surely endure!

5. Blab

Remember when we said live video streaming is the next era of social interaction? Blab is a video messaging platform on which four people can video chat simultaneously as an audience watches, comments and can even instantly switch places with one of the four video chatters. Users can host their own talk shows and debates or simply hang out with friends.

As new social platforms continue to emerge and make an impact, social marketing strategies will also be required to constantly be reinvented to incorporate those relevant to an organizations needs. At Next-Mark we are proud of our unique ability to evolve and reinvent strategies in order to provide our clients with best solutions to take their businesses to the next level.

Have another one to add to the list or a thought on any of these? Leave us a comment!

When you think of the word “engagement,” what comes to mind? Perhaps wedding bells and “happily ever after.”

The term “consumer engagement” is a popular phrase in the marketing world these days. In this context, it means getting consumers to connect, respond and relate to your brand. An engaged consumer is more likely to make a purchase, follow your social media pages, advocate for your brand and share with friends and family.

So what are you doing to engage your market? Are you asking the right questions to impact the bottom line? Are you finding out what your customers need from you, as a brand? What is the best avenue to yield the highest ROI, not just for you, but also for your consumers?

Here at Next-Mark, we dive deep into a client’s identity, educating ourselves in their needs, wants and desired outcomes and turning that into an action plan for the brand. The same process must be applied to your customers.

When you have a brand that resonates and inspires people, they become loyal to that brand. That is when you know you’ve made it. Loyalty, however, doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process, one that has a lot of moving parts that must be managed in order to achieve the desired result.

Our team works endlessly to get you AND your customers to that happy place.

So give us a call and we will ask the right questions to get to the right destination for your business.

David Kelley, a founder of the well-known Silicon Valley design and consulting firm IDEO, believes that creativity is not just something that some people are born with and some aren’t; and that it’s not just something restricted to artists, musicians or writers. Instead, it’s like most things, he believes creative ability is something that everyone possesses and that it’s like a muscle; you can exercise, practice and improve on it and as a result, gain confidence from it.

Daily our clients rely on us to continuously push creative boundaries and devise fresh, imaginative ideas for their brands. Thus it’s of the utmost importance for us to be constantly on top of our creative game and constantly demonstrating our creative confidence.

So how can hone and flex your creative muscle and boost your creative confidence?

1. Allow (even encourage) Yourself to Daydream.

David Kelley calls this practicing “relaxed attention” and in order to harness the power of it, we must do this at a time when our mind is idle, and consider a problem or obstacle that is in our way. When daydreaming, you’re not just wasting time wishing you were somewhere else, a lot of times a new idea will suddenly emerge as you dream, and be sure to document those ideas, write them down. They very well could be the next breakthrough idea for one of you or one of your clients.

2. Collect Your Ideas

It’s important to write your ideas down. A lot of time, our creative self-esteem decreases because somewhere along the way, we stopped listening to our own creative spirit. The next time something random pops into your head, listen to it and write it down! Go old school and keep a special notebook, binder or folder solely designated to your ideas. Successful creative people understand that all ideas may hold value at some point, but we can only focus on creating and implementing them one at a time.

3. Create a Creativity Routine

Remember when we said honing your creativity is like flexing a muscle? Well a routine means spending a little time each day flexing that muscle. Flexing your muscle should be a habit you commit your time and energy to each day. Designing this routine, and implanting it into your day can have a powerful impact on your business success and your client’s success. Writing, journaling, doodling observing the creative world online and around can be something to include in your routine, there is no wrong way to express your creativity.

4. Try on Multiple Hats

When solving a problem, or trying to come up with a new idea for one of our clients, it’s important to think about the situation from many different viewpoints. We challenge ourselves to not just settle with looking at it from a perspective we are comfortable with, but stretch ourselves to push our comfort zone limits and develop ideas that are unique and that will constantly create a conversation about our clients brands. Wearing multiple hats when you’re looking for that next idea will create many fresh perspectives and might guide you to where you may be out of alignment your ideas.

5. Socialize!

One of the best ways to come up with creative ideas is to talk to other people. Socializing can be an incredible source of inspiration and originality. Here at Next-Mark, we are constantly bouncing ideas off one another and getting constructive feedback; it’s an important part of our creative process. Everyone has a different way of thinking, so it’s essential to talk to your team, friends or sometimes even a complete stranger to gain a different perspective on your ideas. Most of the time someone will offer something that you had not even thought about that can take your idea to the next level.

At Next-Mark, being creative and inventive is critical to our success, and the success of our clients. We constantly exercise our creative muscles in order to maintain our creative confidence. Use these tips to boost and maintain yours. If you have any other tips, write them down and send to us!

Picture this – you’re a brand new start-up company looking to make your mark in the world, so naturally one of the first things you focus on is creating and building your brand. You select your name, create a logo, map out your yet-to-be-built website, and develop your brand standards guide that will soon be emailed out to your employees in an email explaining how they should communicate in order to uphold this new brand – all in an email showcasing your new standardized signature, of course.

And you’re doing all of this while simultaneously outlining your new brand strategy.  No one said building a brand was easy. When your brand to-do list starts to resemble your Christmas shopping list, it’s time to take a step back and simplify. Instead of focusing on who you are and what you look like to the consumer, it may be better to determining your brand’s purpose, or what it is that your company promising to deliver to your consumer.

Once you’ve identified the end game – how you envision your brand to ultimately become – then all of the rest of these pieces will fall into place within an integrated approach.

As Philip Kotler, sometimes referred to as the “father of modern marketing,” explains in his recent article Branding: From Purpose to Beneficence, when building a brand a company needs to use positioning and differentiation to communicate the brand’s purpose and ultimately enrich the brand’s identity.

According to Kotler, in addition to purpose, positioning and differentiation, you also need brand trust (so that customers will believe that the brand will deliver what it claims), followed by brand beneficence (whether the brand serves the person and the society well). A socially responsible company needs to shape its offerings to minimize personal or societal ill-effects of their brand offering.

Building a brand should always be an integrated process. It’s more designing a logo or selecting a color palette.  But instead of making it complex and complicated, Kotler recommends following these guiding principles and just be true to your brand’s purpose. Only honesty, originality, and authenticity will work.

And of course remember, once you’ve created your brand, it isn’t doing much for your company unless people are talking about it. Take it a step further and engage your customers in conversation about your brand. Ask us how we can help create a meaningful conversation about your brand.

Social media marketing has never been the clear-cut, black and white model that you learned in Marketing 101. Back in the early days of social media, platforms were finicky, the concept was vague and critics insisted that social marketing was not a viable marketing strategy.

Oh, how times have changed. We’re now immersed in an era with highly functioning platforms, useful advertising options and plenty of free opportunities to make our content public.

New Platforms, Shifting Audiences

Still, the world of social media changes quickly, and with new platforms constantly emerging and audiences continuously shifting, it’s no wonder that companies are scrambling to stay ahead of the game. This past year brought some expected and unexpected changes for social media audiences. Facebook remained strong, leading the pack with its astronomical audience size, along with the ever-growing number of users on Facebook-owned Instagram. Interestingly enough, Facebook began to see a trimming of its audience, losing some younger users while picking up their weight in older audiences.

If history and some recently emerging trends are any indication, 2016 will be a host for a variety of new trends and changes in the social scene. In addition to new platforms and shifting audiences, here are five things The Guardian.com suggests to focus on when planning your social media strategy this year:

1. Make the Investment

However great your content is, if it doesn’t reach people it can’t possibly impact them. Plan investment based on how many potential consumers you’d realistically need to reach to drive business results, not how many fans you have. And don’t produce any content you won’t have the media budget to support.

2. Quality, Not Quantity

Producing just one or two great posts a month removes the need to churn out thoughts of the day and reactive nonsense, and allows you to focus resources on producing something genuinely memorable. And don’t underestimate the power of video. Video offers a huge opportunity to tell richer stories or even just to better stand out with gentle animation.

3. Make it Real

Although social media allows you to broadcast to the masses, it’s also a hugely personal space where a generic message can feel out of place. Managing how people see your content across related platforms such as Facebook and Instagram starts to give you real control of your marketing – allowing you to stop wasting money by reaching someone in too many places (frequency capping) or even to tell a continual story across channels.

4. Get the Message

Four of the world’s six largest social platforms are messaging apps, and their growth is only accelerating. In western markets, few scalable opportunities exist, but platforms such as WeChat and Line in China and Japan respectively, give a glimpse of what’s to come when these platforms open up. By the end of 2016 the capabilities of messaging apps, and in turn the transformational opportunities they present to marketers, will be remarkable.

5. Don’t Underestimate the Basics

Don’t try to be innovative just for innovation’s sake. The most impactful advances of the past couple of years come from looking again at the basic tools social media platforms offer. As marketers, of course you’re anxious to be part of the next big thing, but chances are that might be right in front of you. Don’t overlook the tried and true basics.

So as you’re doing your planning, it’s easy to be distracted by the latest shiny innovations, but focusing on quality content and media planning are key for successful social media marketing in 2016.