The ongoing pandemic has brought about a significant shift in the business landscape, leaving companies with no option but to adapt to the new reality or die. But what does it take to adapt and thrive in a world where traditional marketing strategies no longer suffice? This is where experience marketing comes into the picture, offering a game-changing approach that enables companies to connect with their customers like never before. In this article, we explore why experience marketing is critical for corporate strategy and market adaptation, and share the four key focus areas that businesses must master to stay ahead of the curve. So buckle up and get ready to learn how to adapt and succeed in the new world of marketing.
Experience marketing, a human-centered strategy driving businesses forward amidst the pandemic.
Because copyright matters. How to cite this article: American Institute of Business Experience Design (2023). Adapt or die: 4 critical areas of experience marketing corporate strategy for growth. Retrieved [date you accessed the article], from [copy and paste the URL of the article page].
In the wake of the pandemic, businesses have had to adapt to a new reality where traditional marketing strategies no longer suffice. To stay ahead of the competition, experience marketing has emerged as a game-changer, enabling businesses to connect with their customers and audiences in innovative ways both online and offline. Companies must pivot to this new way of thinking and doing marketing in order to remain relevant and aligned with emerging needs and trends.
This article addresses the pressing question of why experience marketing is critical for corporate strategy and market adaptation. We provide an in-depth analysis of why experience marketing is essential for corporate strategy and how CMOs and businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of and leverage experience marketing for success.
The article covers the following topics:
Why experience marketing is essential for corporate strategy and market adaptation
Experience marketing is a strategic framework that integrates multiple areas of focus along with big data and immersive contextualized data to create tailor-made marketing strategies that offer engaging online and offline experiences to customers. It takes a holistic approach by positioning the product as a part of a successful experiential offering along with esthetics, socialization, ideology, emotion, and intellectual aspects.
It is essential for corporate strategy and market adaptation because it helps businesses create a sustainable competitive advantage, improve engagement and loyalty, differentiate themselves from competitors, attract new customers, increase sales, and gain valuable insights about customers and their preferences.
By leveraging experience marketing, companies can develop cost-effective and customized marketing strategies that enable them to offer unique and immersive experiences to customers, both online and offline.
The risks of sticking to traditional marketing strategies and ignoring experience marketing
Traditional marketing strategies have been the norm for years, but as customer expectations evolve, businesses that stick to these strategies risk losing out on opportunities to stand out in the market. Ignoring experience marketing, which offers immersive and engaging marketing strategies, can lead to various risks that can damage a business.
The first risk is losing customers to competitors who have embraced experience marketing. For example, a company that only markets its products based on their features may miss out on customers who want more than just a product.
The second risk is a decline in brand loyalty. Customers who have a positive experience with a company are likely to remain loyal, but those who do not have a memorable experience are more likely to switch to competitors. For instance, a company that fails to create a unique identity through experience marketing may struggle to retain customers.
The third risk is a decrease in revenue. Companies that ignore experience marketing may not be able to attract new customers or retain existing ones, leading to a decline in sales. For example, a company that does not focus on creating a strong emotional connection with customers may find it challenging to improve sales.
Therefore, experience marketing is a powerful corporate strategy with a multitude of benefits for businesses. By offering unique and immersive experiences, companies can increase customer engagement and loyalty, which can ultimately drive revenue growth. Additionally, experience marketing provides valuable insights into customers' preferences, allowing businesses to tailor their offerings to better meet their customers' needs in the phygital realm.
4 key focus areas of experience marketing for corporate strategy
Experience marketing helps companies develop and implement strategies that offer engaging online and offline experiences to their customers. It entails a holistic approach to marketing that goes beyond promoting products based on their features and focuses on creating immersive experiences that resonate with customers.
There are four key focus areas of experience marketing that are crucial for businesses to create a sustainable competitive advantage and drive successful customer experiences. These focus areas include experience marketing analytics, strategic experience marketing, creative experience marketing, and experience marketing operations.
By integrating these four focus areas into their corporate strategy, CMOs and businesses of all sizes can develop cost-effective and tailor-made marketing strategies that set them apart from their competitors and improve their performance.
1) Experience marketing analytics — Unleashing the power of smart immersive data to transform your business
Experience marketing analytics is a specialized field that helps companies gain valuable insights by integrating big data with immersive contextualized data. By leveraging this approach, companies can develop cost-effective and tailor-made marketing strategies that offer engaging online and offline experiences to their customers.
With experience marketing analytics, companies can gain a better understanding of their target markets, leading to more effective marketing strategies. By focusing on the most promising marketing channels and tactics, companies can optimize their resources and improve their ROI. Moreover, experience marketing analytics can help companies create more engaging experiences that drive online and offline engagement, leading to better customer retention and brand loyalty.
To achieve these goals, there are two main data systems used in experience marketing analytics: experience market research (XMR) and experience marketing information systems (XMIS). While XMR involves gathering data on consumer needs and preferences in the real context by using immersive and ethnographic data collection and analysis tools, XMIS is focused on the effective management and interpretation of this data along with internal data generated by the company's activities.
An excellent practical example of implementing XMR is by performing cross-cultural field observations of customers in a retail store for a long-term period to gather data about their shopping patterns and preferences. This data can help to create a new and innovative way of shopping that can design the future of retail stores. The collected data can then be analyzed to identify patterns and insights that can inform marketing strategies and product development. As for XMIS, a company can use it to manage and interpret the data collected through XMR and other internal sources. This can be done by implementing a customer experience relationship management system. Such a system can be used to track customer experience interactions, analyze customer feedback, and personalize marketing campaigns based on customer preferences and behavior. By doing so, the company can make informed decisions and tailor their marketing efforts to better meet the needs of their customers.
These two systems are crucial for companies to gather and analyze data from various sources, perspectives, temporal dimensions, and cultural settings to gain a deeper understanding of their customers' needs, preferences, and experiences. This enables companies to create more effective marketing strategies and make better business decisions.
Overall, experience marketing analytics is a powerful tool that helps companies gain a competitive edge in today's market. By investing in this field, companies can ensure that they are making the most informed decisions possible, resulting in better customer engagement, retention, and growth.
2) Strategic experience marketing — A game-changing strategy for CMOs and businesses that drive success
Strategic experience marketing is crucial for businesses to create a sustainable competitive advantage and successful customer experiences that engage audiences both online and offline. Unlike conventional myopic marketing strategies that focus solely on promoting products based on their features, strategic experience marketing takes a holistic approach by positioning the product as one of the ingredients that form a successful experiential offering along with esthetics, socialization, ideology, emotion, and intellectual aspects.
By embracing strategic experience marketing, businesses can identify segments in the market to be targeted, organize their activities, and create engaging and profitable experiences that match their customers’ needs. This not only helps a company achieve profitable growth in sales but also creates a durable competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate by competitors.
Furthermore, with the rise of the new profile of consumer 6.0, who values intangible experiences just as much as tangible products, businesses that fail to embrace strategic experience marketing risk falling behind and losing customers to competitors who prioritize creating meaningful and memorable experiences. Therefore, it is imperative that businesses recognize the importance of strategic experience marketing and incorporate it into their corporate strategy to stay ahead in today’s competitive market.
Let's say we have a B2B software company that provides a customer relationship management (CRM) solution for small businesses. Instead of just promoting their CRM software based on its features, they could embrace strategic experience marketing by creating a comprehensive experience for their customers. They could start by organizing webinars to educate their target audience on the importance of customer relationship management and how their CRM software can help small businesses grow and succeed. They could also offer a free trial of their software, so potential customers could test the product before making a purchase decision. Furthermore, they could offer a personalized onboarding experience for new customers, with a dedicated account manager who guides them through the setup process and provides ongoing support. They could also offer training and resources to help customers get the most out of their software, including how to optimize their sales and marketing processes. By taking a holistic approach to their marketing strategy and creating a comprehensive experience for their customers, the B2B software company can differentiate themselves from their competitors, create a durable competitive advantage, and attract and retain loyal customers who value the experience as much as the software itself. This approach can help them establish themselves as trusted partners for small businesses and increase their customer retention rates.
Additionally, experience marketing is a strategic way for CMOs and companies to evaluate their vulnerabilities and opportunities while identifying new trends that can help them achieve their goals. The aim is to define a company's objectives and devise positioning strategies that can better cater to customers' needs by offering unique experiences.
CMOs can achieve this by identifying the current experience offered by the company and assessing how it is perceived by their target market, to identify pain points and adjust their current experience marketing strategies.
3) Creative experience marketing — Captivating your audience and driving online-offline engagement
The creative layer of experience marketing is a crucial aspect of a company's corporate strategy. It serves as the foundation of a company's success and requires imagination and creativity to plan and execute marketing activities that provide customers with an immersive experience. By creating strong emotional connections with customers, creative experience marketing enables companies to engage with and connect to audiences both online and offline. It contributes significantly to a company's performance by setting it apart from competitors, improving sales, and creating a unique identity.
To achieve this, creative experience marketing requires a combination of avant-garde thinking, originality, novelty, utility, co-creation, aesthetics, and authenticity. By implementing creative processes, a company can generate innovative ideas to create an immersive experience for customers that covers all the 7Es of the experiential marketing mix. Studies have shown that companies should focus more on the creative aspect of experience marketing and its impact on value creation and performance.
By responding to their customers' needs and offering new and adapted pricing models, companies can develop a strong emotional connection with their customers, leading to better customer loyalty and increased brand recognition.
Let's say a clothing company wants to implement creative experience marketing. They could create an immersive online shopping experience that includes virtual try-ons, personalized product recommendations, and interactive features. In physical stores, they could offer unique and interactive displays that engage customers and allow them to experience the brand and products in a memorable way. To create a strong emotional connection with its customers, the company can use avant-garde techniques, originality, and authenticity. For instance, they could use unconventional materials or manufacturing processes to create unique and innovative designs, such as 3D printing technology to create custom designs for each customer. By doing so, the company can improve customer engagement, foster customer loyalty, and increase sales.
Therefore, it is crucial for CMOs and businesses to integrate challenging and non-consensual creativity into their experience marketing strategy. This approach contrasts with traditional marketing strategies and has the potential to boost customer engagement, loyalty, and brand recognition.
By thinking outside the box and offering immersive and unique experiences, companies can surprise and delight their audiences, leading to increased sales and a competitive edge in the market.
4) Experience marketing operations — Executing your strategy and ensuring a seamless experience across online and offline channels
The operational layer of the experience marketing corporate strategy refers to the implementation of marketing operations resulting from the analytical, strategic, and creative levels, as previously described. Experience marketing operations help a company achieve the objectives set in its strategy, which can be executed via various types of marketing techniques.
Physical marketing techniques include store design, product packaging, and event setups. For example, a company can create a pop-up store with an attractive design to create a unique shopping experience for its customers.
Human marketing techniques refer to the way a brand interacts with its customers. This can include customer service, personalization, and staff training. For instance, a company can train its employees to provide exceptional customer service to its customers, making them feel valued and appreciated.
Digital marketing techniques involve the use of various online channels to reach customers, such as Internet marketing, event marketing, search engine marketing, inbound marketing, blog marketing, etc. For example, a company can use inbound marketing techniques such as content marketing and social media marketing to attract and engage its target audience.
The use of these types of marketing operations and techniques depends on what kind of experience a company would like to offer, what value it wants to share with its audiences, and where its target audience is present. By understanding and implementing these marketing techniques effectively, a company can create a memorable and engaging experience for its customers, which can ultimately lead to increased brand loyalty and commercial success.
Experience marketing corporate strategy: a comprehensive guide for CMOs and businesses to adapt and succeed
Experience marketing has become a vital aspect of corporate strategy for businesses, and CMOs are now tasked with developing and implementing effective strategies to ensure their companies engage with their customers both online and offline. Here is a comprehensive guide to implementing experience marketing corporate strategy:
Develop a deep understanding of your target audience: To create an effective experience marketing strategy, it is essential first to understand your target audience. What are their interests and preferences? What motivates them? By using experience data analytics, you can gain valuable insights into your customers' behavior and preferences, which can help you create a tailored marketing strategy that resonates with them.
Identify your unique value proposition: What sets your brand apart from your competitors? What value do you offer to your customers that they can't find elsewhere? Identifying your unique value proposition is crucial to creating a successful experience marketing strategy. This proposition should be at the core of your strategy.
Develop a holistic approach to marketing: Conventional marketing strategies focus solely on promoting products based on their features, but experience marketing requires a more holistic approach. Consider the product as one of the ingredients that form a successful experiential offering along with esthetics, socialization, ideology, emotion, and intellectual aspects.
Create immersive and engaging experiences: The creative layer of experience marketing is essential for a company's corporate strategy. It serves as the foundation of a company's success and requires imagination and creativity to plan and execute marketing activities that provide customers with an immersive experience. By creating strong emotional connections with customers, creative experience marketing enables companies to engage with and connect to audiences both online and offline.
Ensure a seamless experience across online and offline channels: Experience marketing operations help a company achieve the objectives set in its strategy, which can be executed via various types of marketing techniques. It is crucial to ensure that the marketing strategy is executed seamlessly across online and offline channels.
Continuously monitor and adapt the strategy: Finally, it is essential to continuously monitor and adapt the strategy based on the results. By analyzing the data and customer feedback, you can identify areas that need improvement and adjust the strategy accordingly. This ongoing process of monitoring and adapting the strategy is crucial to ensuring its success.
In conclusion, implementing an experience marketing corporate strategy requires a deep understanding of your target audience, a holistic approach to marketing, creativity, and a commitment to ongoing monitoring and adaptation. By following these steps, CMOs and businesses can successfully implement an experience marketing strategy that engages customers both online and offline.
To successfully implement this shift, companies and CMOs must continuously enhance their knowledge of marketing in the phygital post-pandemic economy and acquire the necessary skills to stay ahead of competitors by mastering experience marketing strategy and implementation. If you are looking for valuable insights into experiential marketing strategy, design, and management, sign up for AIBXD Strawberry Experience Blog, a free resource that offers daily insights into phygital and experiential marketing. Additionally, the American Institute of Business Experience Design offers a comprehensive program to help marketers elevate their skills in experiential marketing and stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends.
Whenever you're ready to get started, we invite you to explore our range of exclusive, certified course programs. Our programs are designed by top-tier experts from industry and academia to equip you with all the necessary tools and strategies to implement successful and cost-effective experience strategies that drive ROI and business growth. Join our elite global community of business experience experts and start your journey towards transforming your business today.
AIBXD offers comprehensive course programs on business experience design, strategy, and management that cater to all levels and profiles. Our portfolio includes our flagship executive education programs for CMO, CXO, creative designers, and all C-level executives. We also offer diploma programs for entrepreneurs and project/product managers, as well as online course certificates. If you are unsure which program would be the best fit for you, try our fun and easy-to-use AIBXD Course Recommender™. By answering just five quick questions, you can get a personalized course recommendation immediately.
If you're tired of wasting money, resources, and energy on traditional marketing techniques, we can help. Our AIBXD consulting and market research services can assist businesses in starting the experience and phygital transformation. Feel free to check them out and see how we can help you optimize your marketing strategy.
Cite this article as: American Institute of Business Experience Design (2023). Adapt or die: 4 critical areas of experience marketing corporate strategy for growth. Retrieved [date you accessed the article], from [copy and paste the URL of the article page].