Alana Sandel is a Chief Experience Officer at Marketing For Wellness, the agency committed to supporting brands that stand for well-being.
Popup experiences are developed by brands looking to create brand awareness in markets where they may not have a physical presence or as a testing ground to determine if a product or brand might succeed in the surrounding area.
The pop-up experience might last four days or a few months. To get the most ROI for your brand, consider the checklist of best practices we use at our agency.
Maximize Results With A Clear Objective
Align the business objective with the experience you aim to create for your soon-to-be followers and customers. For example, if your objective is to create awareness, then plan on launching a marketing campaign a few months prior to the store opening to get people interested in your brand.
An informed media-buying process that leverages data is a must. If the budget is too tight to obtain research and hire media-buying experts, consider utilizing groups and communities to get the insights you will need to create a campaign.
If your goal is to sell a product, consider pre-selling your product and using geo-targeted advertising to warm up the market. Amazon, Walmart and other online retailers can be natural fits for generating ratings and testimonials to give people more reasons to trust your brand.
Delight Your Customers
Create user profiles and be prepared to delight them for as little as four days or as long as a few months.
By utilizing various research studies as well as social media listening, you should be able to figure out what type of events get traction as Facebook events, as well as what type of media organizations represent strong partners to drive traffic and visibility for your pop-up based on their previous events and RSVPs. You can also identify the talent you will need, such as DJs, chefs, performers and influencers.
Find The Perfect Spot
During a four-day pop-up store experience in which we promoted sustainable living with products made in Taiwan, we had to find a place in the city with a sophisticated vibe and like-minded neighbors.
Finding the right location for the pop-up store was critical to the success of the activation. And this is what you need to find for your brand.
First, figure out what type of setup your brand needs, and then you will need to work with reliable local experts to help you find or validate the location. Before signing on the dotted line for the location contract, make sure that the space can be easily tailored to your needs to avoid extensive construction costs or remodeling costs. So while size and location are important, so is the potential for the design, as the right space can save you a lot of time on a custom design build. When you settle on a space and you’re negotiating, you should also make sure that you discuss how you can utilize the space’s assets to promote the event with printed and digital signage. For our most recent event in Seattle for Taiwan Excellence Earth Month, we partnered with a shopping center and positioned our pop-up store by an activewear store and stores focused on sustainability and handmade goods to target people who care about personal and global well-being.
Become The Most Interesting Brand In The Space You’ll Occupy
Once you secure the space, get the excitement going with potential visitors. Share your message with outdoor advertising, public relations outreach, radio, advertorials and extensive social media ad campaigns. You can also engage with influencers.
Gifting people with items that connect with your message is a great way to get people to take a peek at your pop-up store. We celebrated the sustainability theme of the recent campaign by giving people succulents, children’s books, bubble tea and dessert.
Engage With Experiences And Influencers
Partnering with exceptional talent provides a reason for people to attend and stay for your influencer party with a DJ and local chefs, art classes, concerts, contests and other offerings. But it also provides another communication channel through celebrities’ followings on social media. Our most recent collaboration with a celebrity chef and Amazon best-selling author attracted people to our pop-up to try free dessert and bubble teas while getting the message out to her 200,000 followers.
Get Your Influencers Lined Up And Ready
When you’re creating a pop-up store experience, it’s important to engage with local influencers for a number of reasons. First, they can help bring in crowds, as locals often look to them for inspiration and suggestions. But they can also help you to create experiences in your store. For past events, we worked with influencers to create entertainment and educational programs, including nutritional demos for probiotic smoothies and beverages.
Second, the right influencer can help you build your brand awareness and even sales if the program is based on a well-thought-through customer journey.
The content influencers create for your pop-up store promotion could scale above and beyond, as you can leverage it for other campaigns.
Smile
You can have the most incredible experience in the most trafficked location, but if you don’t have the right staff running the event, it can all fall apart. Establishing the right team and brand ambassadors is critical for the pop-up store experience, as they set the tone for the entire event. And of course, with positivity and smiles, they help inspire people to learn more. Attendees will look to your team for information, inspiration and confirmation.
In Short
Ensure the success of your pop-up store by crafting experiences people will appreciate. The pop-up experience is a great opportunity to activate troops on the ground to make your brand go viral when you are ready to activate in a new market.
Choose your agency partner with great attention to detail. Make sure that if you need both the design-build and a marketing program, the agency of choice will dedicate a team to the project that will roll up their sleeves to take on big and small tasks. After all, you are opening doors to welcome potential customers into your world.
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