New businesses and veteran brands have a few common concerns. As the days go by, a deluge of digital advertisements, online paid content and regular promotions are making it difficult for the brands to reach their target audiences. Increasing the budget and making way for new digital technology is hardly helping the entrepreneurs and marketing managers garner the attention of the people in a crowded market. In short, we are facing The Wall of saturation, and the only way to reach the people on the other side is by going around it.
How to pick the best marketing agency for your brand?
Not all company marketing teams have what it takes to take a plunge in promotional events and experiential marketing. That brings us to the next step – finding the top experiential marketing agencies that can design marketing strategies to reach people at their specific geographic locations. This step requires a significant amount of research. Going deep will help you compare the different services you can expect from individual marketing agencies and advertising firms. There might be one or two promotional events by non-competitors that you might like. You can call up their marketing team to find out which agency they are using. It will act as a reference cum recommendation along with the latest sample of the agency’s work.
Consider their location
While shortlisting your advertising agency options, do not forget to weigh in the location of the agencies. If you are in NYC, you should work with an agency with an office nearby. The advantage of location will always be with you since you can conduct your meetings in person and bounce ideas off each other frequently. Moreover, when you plan to roll the food truck ideas and location-based activation ideas out, you will get the best location suggestions from them.
The size of the agency should not matter
Another dilemma many entrepreneurs face while choosing the experiential marketing agency is the size of the agency. What is ideal for a company, a big agency with smaller clients or a small agency with big names in its client list? There is no easy answer to this, but your marketing aspirations, the size of the target customer base and your marketing budget. More prominent agencies will bring more experience to the table, but smaller companies can offer you more time.
Invite them to share their ideas
The only way to decide which agency is the best for you is by sending them invites for a pitch. Sometimes, even the smaller and newer agencies will surprise you with their incredible ideas. The top-billed marketing agencies right now may not offer the best experiential marketing ideas. Outdoor advertising, mobile tours, pop-up containers and wild-posting define the new niche of live marketing. The old techniques are not good enough to power the new live marketing gigs that are necessary to catch the eye of the tech-savvy customers of today.
Irrespective of their employee number and length of the client list, they should be able to provide you with thorough market insight. Their work should be a result of excellent research work and extensive ideation process. Unless a marketing agency shows innovation in their work, you might want to rethink your choice of event marketers for your brand.