The Most Crucial Element to your Brand's Content Marketing Strategy
The Content Marketing Institute cites that “events pack a powerful content marketing punch, because people attending events will remember their experience at your event far longer than they’ll remember reading a blog post” (😬 I promise this post has great and valuable insights!) This means that you, as experiential marketers, must produce activations that create compelling opportunities for content.
THE POTENTIAL PITFALL
It’s true, the consumers in attendance at your activation will definitely have an emotional connection to your brand if you’ve done your job well, but in reality, how long will that connection last? This fleeting emotion is a potential pitfall, and so it is crucial to ensure that those feelings are experienced long after the event concludes. The solution? Visual Content. How else are your consumers to remember their experience without the compelling photos or video memorializing and story-telling the best moments from the event?
USE CASES FOR VISUAL CONTENT
Industry experts and the general public alike have touted experiential installations such as the Museum of Ice Cream and Refinery29’s 29 Rooms of course for the actual experiences within, but also for their ability to organically generate visual content that transcends from the space into press, social media posts and more.
This ability speaks to one of the crucial benefits and strategic plays of using your event to create visual content: sharing the experience to the much larger pool of your target demographic not physically there to experience your activation. The magic here is that the content created on site is then consumed by and inspires others who may never even interact with the experience and VOILA! Your brand’s audience grows. Statistics show that 81% of organizations use in-person events as their content marketing tactic and as a result, organizations state those in-person events have a 75% effectiveness rating.
Equally as important (if not more so) to the user generated content at the event, is the content produced that is curated by YOU, the brand. Sure the selfie of Lindsey and her friends diving in a giant pool of sprinkles is great, but that is a calculated moment. What about the meaningful authentic moments that truly elicit an emotional response because there is a real story being told? THAT story is one that your consumer desires to be a part of. Focus on capturing the moments that create desire and need, and instantly connects the viewer by triggering an emotional response, even if they were not there to experience it hands on.
The only effective way to accomplish the documentation of those meaningful and authentic moments is by having a professional photographer and/or videographer on site who innately understands what it means to tell the stories of your consumer experiences through the lens of your brand. A story that is authentic AND ladders up to your brand’s marketing strategy and standards. Now THAT is a winning content marketing play.
“Equally as important (if not more so) to the user generated content at the event, is the content produced that
is curated by you, the brand.”
ADDED VALUE
To augment the value of an increased audience, the other value of professional photography & videography of your event is for proof. You know the old saying, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, does it make a sound? Similarly, did your event even happen if there’s no content to prove it? If there’s no content that came out of the event, did it actually happen?
THE TAKEAWAY
The risk you take by not capturing professional photo or video at your event is that you’ve spent a significant chunk of your marketing dollars to create the best experiential activation and it falls flat because didn’t maximize your reach. Instead, you bet all your money on on Lindsey’s selfie to drive buzz and foster interest/appeal (Lindsey, you’re cute and all, but it ain’t gonna cut it)
This risk results in a missed opportunity; as professional photography & videography is a return on your investment because it:
Amplifies your audience
Highlights your capabilities
Reinforces your branding
Supports your marketing strategy
Most importantly, it will create a lasting impression about your brand because this curated visual content will elicit a long lasting emotion from the story told in the image.
