A GUIDE TO PROVING & IMPROVING

EXPERIENTIAL ROI

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In the past, marketing was very much an art comprised mainly of experience, gut feeling and a good serving of luck. The ability to track interactions and append real actionable numbers to campaigns has changed the industry and caused a shift to data-driven campaign analysis. As a result, marketing budgets have become increasingly scrutinized as a growing number of brands choose to measure success against their Return on Investment or Objectives (ROI/ROO). Every marketing channel has to meet corporate goals (e.g. leads, sales, brand awareness), otherwise budget and resources are quickly reallocated. ROI is no longer determined after campaigns are over; it is a real-time creature that will heavily influence strategic and tactical decisions. Brands want to determine ROI using data and analytics as opposed to rough estimates and subjective guesses.

Why is this guide important?

INTRO: THE NEW WORLD OF MARKETING ROI

This guide will show you why and how to prove and improve ROI/ROO reporting for experiential and live marketing campaigns.

52%of marketers see proving the ROI of marketing activites as their biggest challenge.

(Source: Hubspot's 2015 Inbound Marketing Report)

IN THIS GUIDE

1. The Challenge of Live Marketing ROI 2. How to Prove Your Return a. How Digital is Enabling Tracking b. Campaign Objectives and Their Return c. KPIs to Underpin Reporting 3. Improving Results with Optimization 4. Easy ROI with Live Marketing Automation (LMA)

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Consumers are multi-tasking, time strapped and overwhelmed by content,social media and growing inboxes. Not surprisingly, it has become increasingly difficult to capture their attention.

To drive more engagement with consumers, brands are paying more attention to live marketing. It allows them to interact digitally or in-person with consumers through trade shows, VIP events, test drives, product samples, demos, interactive displays and more. Live marketing lets brands create buzz, excitement, interest and actions such as social media activity, downloads, demo requests, leads and sales.

These are some of the most popular live marketing activities:

1.0 LIVE MARKETING

Kiosks Sponsorships SamplingsTest Drives

Surveys Events Experiential Marketing

Instore Experience

Today, marketers face the battle of quantifying program success metrics for the billions of dollars spent on sponsorships, auto shows, events, samplings and more. The question is, which specific live marketing channels produce the best results and how do you track their true value to your bottom line?

Drive More Sales45%

31%

8%

2%

8%

6%

Build Awareness

Generate PR/Buzz

Collect Leads

Other

Reach More Consumers

What’s The Challenge?

Brands are running campaigns but they can’t accurately tell if they are working. For example, it is hard to know if a consumer who signed up for a test drive eventually purchased an automobile, or whether someone who sampled a product took advantage of a promotional offer.

The problem? There hasn’t been technology to effectively track live marketing campaigns and a brand’s interactions with consumers. In many cases, the data that defines success is highly subjective or prone to gaps and inaccuracies that result from manual reporting. These data points regularly include the number of attendees (using paper ballots that are manually counted), business cards collected (usually in fishbowls!) or media impressions – the number of people who may have seen a brand’s signage at an event (rough estimates or guesses). With data-driven marketing becoming the norm, within the wider marketing industry, it's time for a change in live marketing reporting.

To prove and improve ROI, marketers need the ability to track consumer interaction and access real-time data. They can then determine how campaigns are driving relationships, awareness, leads and sales.

Primary Focus of Live Marketing Campaigns* (2015)

*Brands with budget > $10M (Source: EMI/Mosaic EventTrack 2015)

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2.0 PROVING YOUR ROI

Live Marketing ROI Overview

Live marketing ROI is driven by the ability to track every step of the customer journey. The goal is to bring consumer traffic into the physical world where in-person interactions can capture and track valuable insights. These insights enable a two-way conversation, full of actionable insight, across every subsequent engagement.

This conversation is facilitated with digital tools that include native applications, websites, emails, SMS and more. ROI is tracked through "consumer journeys" which are defined by digital interactions during in-person experiences. Consumer journeys are endless and can include aspects such as registration, check-in, contest, survey, sampling, social share and photo opportunities. Data is captured at every interaction from multiple sources so campaigns can be aggregated, analyzed and optimized. After data is captured, it must seamlessly integrate across devices and filter into a customer management system or directly to relevant sales teams.

Most organizations neither have the time nor resources to develop digital assets that instantly sync with a comprehensive database in real-time. Using live marketing software is the smartest way to build live digital assets and track every live experience without breaking the bank or dealing with cumbersome development timelines.

of marketers said their ability to measure and demonstrate ROI represents a key obstacle to deploying live marketing for their brand.

79% (Source: 2008 Marketers Survey,” Jack Morton Worldwide)

The first step to any experiential or live marketing activation is defining the core objective(s) of your campaign. Are you only looking for the most qualified sales ready leads? Or to engage consumers as advocates of your brand?

Sales Enablement

Sales enablement processes break down quickly as traffic per event or the number of events increase. For a sales enablement strategy, your return lies in the ability to capture as many customers as possible and instantly filter qualified leads directly to sales teams, ambassadors, or dealers.

Brand Experience

A brand experience strategy can include a variety of events that are not limited to product samplings, VIP events and tours. The core principle of brand experiences is offering a seamless and premium package with custom data capture abilities. The true return comes through unique consumer journeys that produce valuable consumer insight and a heightened perception of the brand.

Lead Generation

Live marketing software allows an unlimited number of engagement points that include both kiosk and CSR mediums. The return on any lead generation strategy focuses on finding as many relevant engagements as possible and following up with those leads in a timely and personalized manner.

Social Enhancement

Live marketing software supports native photo capture capabilities and integrated social sharing so advocates can share their personalized experiences as they interact with your brand. The key to tangible return revolves around moving social engagements into face-to-face conversations where insights and analytics can be captured or the conversation can continue.

81%

79%

62%

57%

55%

Top Live Marketing Goals 2015

Brand Awareness

Product Learning

Increase Sales

Influencer Event

Product Launch

Establish Your Main Objectives

Source: (EMI/Mosaic EventTrack 2015)

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Brands, sponsorship executives and agencies may thrive on the currency of “media value”, but impression metrics have limited the insight and evolution of sponsorship strategy. It's time for experiential marketing to embrace performance metrics and focus on data-driven performance measures:

1. Cost per 1000

Custom tech solutions or assets built on a campaign basis can quickly inflate the cost of live marketing activities without a tangible increase in engagement numbers. Live marketing software will greatly reduce the time and cost associated with gaining a higher volume of engagements.

2. Engagements/Leads by Rep

Live marketing software ensures your lead by representative analysis maintains data integrity. Reported leads are valid entries and those entries are continously tied to the representative that captured them.

3. Number of Engagements (YOY

Not only does experiential marketing software enable year-over-year comparisons, but also improves results as your digital costs remain fixed, regardless of the number of assets you execute.

4. Conversion Ratio

Live marketing software ensures leads are accurate and qualified onsite so you can track the full consumer journey. This means you know exactly when and how leads convert.

Top 3 Criteria Used to Measure Experiences

Top 3 Methods Used to Measure Results

Onsite Survey/Interview

47%

59%

65%

Total Attendance or Participation

83%

80%

85%

Post-Event Survey/Interview

65%

64%

64%

Facebook 'Likes', Social Activity

37%

57%

61%

Interactive Technology Tracking Tools

N/A

15%

42%

Leads

67%

64%

58%

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'13

'13

'13

'14

'14

'14

'14

'14

'14

'15

'15

'15

'15

'15

'15

Define Data-Driven Key Performance Indicators

(Source: EMI/Mosaic EventTrack 2015)

of marketers integrate experiential with other marketing campaigns.76%

Leverage Digital To Unify Reporting

Fragmented data, manual reporting and a lack of transparency are causing many experiential marketers to lag behind the general marketing industry when it comes to reporting and analytics. Live marketing software has changed the experience and reporting landscape. Today, success is measured in weeks or days rather than quarters or years. By using experiential marketing software, you access 3 key neccesities for proper ROI reporting:

1. Uniform Data

The ability to collect and harmonize campaign indicators across channels, combining siloed data from multiple sources, can prove extremely difficult. Leverage experiential marketing software to standardize data collection across your campaign. By integrating digital assets with one another, and across channels, you enable reporting in a unified manner with consistent attribution.

2. Automatic Campaign Reporting

Digital devices can save data, within their own memory or wirelessly transfer captured data to a comprehensive database. With experiential marketing software, you instantly transform raw user data into actionable consumer insights and visual analytics. Using universal validation and fewer transcriptions will minimize the opportunity for data loss.

3. More Transparency

It is now possible to access deeper transparency with live marketing software. Results can be shared across parties at any time. Real-time transparency allows you to change campaign assets and procedures during live activations. This improves performance and builds stronger relationships.

(Source: EMI/Mosaic EventTrack 2015)

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*expected growth (Source: Candian Marketing Association)

6.7%

65.6%*

2015

GROWTH OVER THE NEXT 3 YEARS

3.0 IMPROVING ROIReduce Costs and Improve Return

Allocate Resources Strategically

For many marketing teams, resources are facing ever mounting pressure. The problem is that many brands and agencies are allocating a large amount of funds, time and people into creating piecemeal digital solutions. By investing resources into a scalable tool, that integrates across departments and teams, it is possible to build a seamless solution. By producing digital assets for a fraction of the cost, you can reduce investment, reduce risk and improve ROI.

Reduce Time to Market

Agencies and brands have traditionally built every digital piece from scratch - completely piecemeal. As agencies and external teams collaborate to put digital projects together, time to market can significantly increase through development and collaborative roadblocks. Experiential marketing software has enabled digital assets and national activation to greatly reduce development and launch time. A single landing page development project can take weeks, but with experiential marketing software brands can reduce web development to a matter of days. Most importantly, this solution by passes the need to wait for the App Store approval processes and allows instant campaign launches or asset revisions.

% of Marketing Budget Spend on Analytics:According to CMOs

Access Consumer Insights and Analytics

Brands encounter a range of consumers across the landscape of their experiential advertising campaigns. It’s important to know who those people are and for them to remember the brand experience. Using a two-way conversation allows them to pinpoint which markets are the most engaged so that, when the time is right, they can focus efforts on expanding the brand with highly targeted and proven consumer segments.

Change Campaigns as they Happen

With real-time consumer data, and the ability to update digital assets as your programs are running, it is possible to ensure the highest possible return from your campaigns. Optimize your digital assets in real time with live A/B testing of overall strategies, campaign creative or data capture fields to find the right formula for the best results.

80%of marketing analytics today fall in the post-event diagnostic category.

(Source: Candian Marketing Association)

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4.0 EASY ROI WITH LMA

For brands and agencies, there is no escaping a growing focus on ROI when it comes to live marketing.

As brands look to maximize their marketing investments, ROI will heavily impact how campaigns are planned, launched, tracked and measured. For brands that do live marketing, such as trade shows, test drives, sampling events and sponsorships, ROI will be driven by data and real time insight - no more subjective estimates or vanity metrics. Live marketing automation (LMA) and live marketing software allow brands to see, for the first time, how their campaigns are performing. It allows marketers to make apples-to-apples comparisons against data-driven activities such as inbound marketing, SEM and online advertising to justify campaigns and budget allocation.

Live marketing automation gives marketers more confidence regarding the effectiveness of their experiential and live campaigns within the overall marketing mix. The novel ability to determine ROI for experiential activations will empower marketers to craft creative and impactful strategies with valuable consumer insight and proven ROI. At a time when engaging consumers is becoming ever more important, the ability to stay ahead of the curve is ever more crucial.

Better Engagement

Create and launch activation tools that drive more interest, more participation and more social sharing. Tap into the power of real-time analytics to make on-the-fly changes to live marketing campaigns which will improve their effectiveness.

Lower Costs

Quickly develop websites, microsites and mobile apps that can be easily updated and optimized in real time. Our cost certainty and streamlined workflow gives you more control over budgets and resources, as well as better management of brand assets and shorter time to market.

Higher Sales

Tap into the power of data to drive more excitement, more interest and more leads. Then, nurture sales with personal and contextual communications and content. It’s about jump-starting opportunities to drive the customer journey.

Limelight helps brands prove and improve the ROI of their live marketing activities. We offer a DIY data-driven platform that delivers better customer engagement, higher sales and real-time insights. We also reduce your costs and save you time. It’s live marketing made better.

For more information, please visit: limelightplatform.com

Or contact us at:e: info@limelightplatform.comp: 1-877-888-5458