By Jeff Lew, Marketing Manager, Spingo

Experiential marketing isn’t new, but with social media and technology driving shares and views online, it has earned a lot of attention over the recent years. And it’s more than just flash mobs and prankvertising. Experiential marketing is an opportunity for your audience to see, interact, or feel your messaging in a physical space. When executed with clear digital marketing objectives in mind, real world experiences can translate into powerful ways to drive engagement with your brand online.

If experiential marketing makes sense for your brand, here are a few tips to effectively use it as a part of your digital strategy:

1. Plan experiences around your internet marketing goals.

Are you trying to increase social media followers or are you promoting a new product? Planning with a digital framework in mind will help you illustrate ROI.

2. Invest in creative.

Think big. Start with several ideas and narrow it down to an experience that will make your brand stand out. If you’re already running a campaign, consider how can you creatively convey your message through this medium.

3. Piggyback or sponsor major events.

Instead of trying to think of ways to generate crowds, you can simply go to where the people already are. Find events that make sense for your brand and be there to engage your customer.

4. Be interactive.

Interactive experiences deliver higher engagement with your audience. Whatever you decide to do, allow the experience to crossover from the physical world to the digital world through Twitter, Instagram, or the platform of your choice.

5. Be flexible.

There are always a few variables that you can’t plan for. Be ready to adjust or adapt. It’s important to stay flexible in the digital world as well. Stay sharp with real-time social media responses, PR, earned media, etc.

6. Capture the experience to use as a blog post or video marketing content.

It doesn’t have to be a major production. Even just a photo or two will go along way to help the experience live online.

7. Determine how to measure success.

Think beyond just “views” as a metric and decide which factors will help you measure the success of the experience based on the goals that you’ve set.

The ROI for experiential marketing doesn’t have to be murky. Go in with a solid digital plan, and it will be well worth the investment.