The new Marketing Strategy: “You’re digitally invited!”

Living in the Digital Age has its own perks & losses. As with every innovation and passing moment, the world is evolving and ever since social media arrived, every concept, idea and lifestyle went through a drastic change redefining everything. All thanks to internet & the growing technology, that the pace at which we are growing, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that we are discovering new opportunities every moment.

Introduction of Social Media to the world opened a new realm having real individuals with their representation on an online platform as their virtual reality. Since then, all marketers started focusing on how to use social media and virtual reality to acquire their benefits in marketing strategies.

Virtual reality is a technology that could actually allow you to connect on a real human level, soul-to-soul, regardless of where you are in the world. Virtual reality is the ‘ultimate empathy machine.’ These experiences are opportunities to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, connecting humans to one-another in a profound way that’s never been seen before in any other form of media; which can change people’s perception of each other. And that’s how I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world. – Chris Milk

Social media allows branding and marketing activities through internet, by connecting and communicating interactively with the consumer to serve to the new, amplified & openly aware virtual needs. As social media provides an online platform to the consumer, which invites them to express their wants, desires and needs freely acting like an instant feedback which will help a brand get closer to the consumer to provide satisfaction.

Social media brought in a lot more than one could imagine. It brought various opportunities to connect, newer services to interact and a whole other life of communication where one of them is, Virtual Events.

Well structurally, a virtual event can be defined as a live interaction among individuals that takes place through the web and on the web. For a virtual event to take place, live interaction is a must; i.e. individuals should be duly connected via internet to the online webpage hosting the event like, the social media. This can be referred to as providing the consumer a ‘Digital Experience’.

Well, Virtual Event is a part of Experiential Marketing. As it looks to provide a digital experience to the consumers by making them a part of the experience which is imperative.

How Experiential Marketing?

Well let me give you an example of the popular Ariel Fashion Shoot Game!

In 2011, during one week, 29 August — 3 September, in a specially built glass box in the waiting hall of Stockholm Central Station, passers-by could watch as clothes are hung on a washing line, only to be soiled. Logging onto Ariel’s Facebook page — www.facebook.com/arielsverige — and you could win clothes by controlling a specially programmed industrial robot loaded with ketchup, drinking chocolate and lingonberry jam in real time. With designer garments as your targets, while your challenge was to hit them as they swish in front of the robot at Stockholm Central Station. The game was easy. All you had to do was: Aim, Stain and Win! Then, the stained garment would be sent in the post after being washed on-site with regular Ariel Actilift.

So you see this is how Virtual Events take place by involving number of people around the world coming together at one platform for sharing a common interest for the Ariel Fashion Shoot game introducing the world how virtual events can be used as marketing strategies and how beneficial they are as future marketing activities to be well-considered.

But why are these in trend so much? What’s so attractive about Virtual Events?

In virtual events, there’s no physical presence but, there’s a common shared purpose present, which binds every individual sitting at every corner of the world. Since, virtual events are a great way to bring people together, while keeping the expenses low.

As of today, every individual has a social life and it’s far more important for them to be connected all the time. Virtual events provide a great way to add experiences of such kind which not only reduce the geographical distance but also ensure that lots of people are engaging at the same time for one particular event.

Since leading a social life has become of more importance than the real life, virtual events will hold more significance today as the consumer engagement, consumer reach, consumer behavior and consumer experiences are widely open to the brands to understand how marketing strategies should be devised and marketing activities should be carried out. Virtual events’ planning also helps in brand positioning and increases brand awareness.

So next time when you plan to do social media marketing, you must remember that, Virtual Events are a big help in increasing a brand’s identity in a more creative and innovative way.