To provide a brand activation strategy that works, brands need to have a clear vision and well-defined goals. In the following, you will explore the crucial steps of planning a unique brand activation before getting familiar with them.
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How to Plan Brand Activation
1- Determine a brand's values and goals.
2- Define target audience, persona, or end consumer.
3- Write a scenario, invite some guests, run a dedicated social media campaign to engage and entertain the target audience.
4- You may run a party for which you will need to have some logistics and preparations. Otherwise, you need to design an amazing isolated individual brand experience to get online impressions and successful sale campaigns.
5- Find and track social network impressions and other metrics to assess the effects of the event.
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Run a Brand Activation Campaign
The first step in providing a brand activation strategy is determining event goals, such as increasing brand awareness, acquiring new customers, or providing an online brand presence. Goals should be achievable and suit business size and activities. According to brand activation goals, the business should create a budget to prepare event logistics, hosting, or sampling campaigns.
Digital marketing solutions such as online and offline sampling campaigns have the advantage of being measurable by which new and innovative brands can track their ROI. They also generate customer feedback and increase social media users' engagement with a certain brand or sponsored content. Well-known and new groundbreaking brand activations use a combination of online and offline marketing campaigns to increase their influence and achieve new customers.
1- Setting a Goal
Brand activation events happen for a reason, like opening a local branch/store or launching a new product or series of products that influence their goals. New brands use brand activation to activate their business and deliver their products or services. Established brands also use brand activation campaigns to increase their brand awareness or completely reshape their brand image.
2- Create a Brand Activation Budget
Well-known brand activation campaigns by global brands are not so much hard to plan if your new brand has the budget to compete with million-dollar established businesses like inviting celebrities and influencers to your brand activation event. It works pretty well but simply requires a notable budget that, in most cases, isn't available for brand activation.
3- Define Target Audience
Target audience character has an important role in choosing the right items to go viral on social media. Every brand has its unique customer base that brand activation targets them using innovative campaigns and ideas. Without a deep understanding of the problems and desires of end consumers, it would be hard for brands to gain their attention, which is the primary goal of every brand activation.
Brand activation tries to establish a personal relationship with each customer to have long-time loyal customers for which a clear definition of the target audience is necessary. Some new brands incorporate other brands' experiences in their brand activation to show and share their values. From iPhone rewards on social media lotteries to retargeting local customers of Google's #paywithaphoto event in #paywithacupcake campaign by Zappos at Texas are some known experiences of this type of cooperation of brands to engage customers.
4- Use Online Solutions
Brand activation, in most cases, is combined, multi-touch blends of digital and local branding and marketing tactics in which brands try their best to increase their influence by providing memorable moments. We typically use the Internet and social media networks in brand activation campaigns to increase brand awareness or activate the brand's online presence.
5- Digital Product Sampling Campaigns
Digital solutions help new brands to find large numbers of customers and users in a short time. Peekage is a digital product sampling platform that makes packaging and distributing samples for businesses very easy without investing in logistics and distribution channels. Brands and product providers can use Peekage services to find their target audience and interact through product sampling solutions.
New brands explore new marketing methods to achieve their particular brand activation goals and metrics. Digital product sampling campaigns try to find the target audience in large customer and user databases using effective AI algorithms. Beauty and cosmetic brands, for example, use Peekage to deliver their product samples to their target audience doors. So if you have a brand that offers particularly personal products, you can use Peekage to generate new leads.
Brand Activation Ideas & Examples
Brand activation is a multi-touch singular brand experience that helps increase brand awareness. It occurs in a certain situation, such as product release, store/shop opening, or simply rebranding the former brand image and experience. In most cases, they are a combination of the following types of brand activation ideas.
- Provide a unique brand experience using surprising elements.
- Giveaways and Product Sampling Campaigns using social media networks.
- Providing what people love to see: a cool shower in a summer concert or an adult version of a baby stroller.
- Run social media campaigns such as giveaways lotteries and provoke users to make hot your brand activation hashtag.
- Participate in trends.
- Don't be afraid to use other brand experiences that please customers. Distribute some cold drinks to participants.
- Using technology and showing off new products is an inseparable part of technology brands' activation events.
A surprising element can be a singular local experience/event or an individual experience right at the customer's home who took part in digital product sampling campaigns.
Invite some influencers to increase your social media brand awareness if you have a local event.
Pop-up stores and experimental marketing solutions are popular brand activation ideas.
To read a full list of 30 brand activation ideas, you can check the Peekage article. Remember that a brand activation event is a multi-touch experience using several branding ideas and impressions listed here.
Brand Activation Examples
Starbucks: Sparkle Shop - Starbucks Canada created a pop-up store campaign to surprise customers with a new line of cold drinks
Lipton Ice Tea: Be A Daybreaker - Used a large lemon bathtub to engage morning passers in London
Dunkin' Donuts Giveaway RV - Ran portable giveaways to distribute cold drinks and donuts to roadway drivers
GoGo Squeez Applesauce - made giant automated applesauce selling machine in the shape of their product
Zappos and Google: Pay with a cupcake - re-targeted Google fans with establishing a giveaway pop-up store next to them to exchange their cupcakes with free Zappos products
Read more: 30 Ways to Actually Increase Sales Online - Proven Methods
Final words
In order to ensure that your brand activation campaign is a success, it's important to take the time to plan each step of the process carefully. By following best practices in brand activation strategies, you should be able to create an engaging and exciting experience for your customers that will help promote your product or service.
