In today's highly competitive world of marketing - it is no longer enough to get the attention of your potential customers.

You must fascinate them. You must make them want to stop and stare, and not just grace your ads or marketing efforts with a two-second glance.

How do we fascinate our customers. Heard of experiential marketing? If not, read on.

"The advent of experiential marketing has exploded across many areas of everyday life, and we are now moving more toward the realm of experience addiction," says marketing guru Raymond Nadeau.

Technology helps to deliver new ways to touch the senses

Nadeau purports that the world has become a huge playground – from theme parks to cruise ships, people are searching for the penultimate in experience consumption. Technology also feeds into this phenomenon, delivering new ways to touch the senses.

Big brands with big budgets will obviously have an easier task with this, as creating such multi-sensory experiences will cost. As a travel agency, you ask, how can I achieve this?

One way you can start is in your own "backyard". Start with your retail store. Leading-edge retail concepts now are far more sensory in nature. Moving mannequins (or even life ones!), and sounds in window displays are becoming more commonplace. Retail concepts are carried throughout the store – in the way items are displayed, and how the staff members are dressed.

Dress up your retail to match the travel product you are promoting

As an example, let's look at how you can promote a new niche travel product – spas. Imagine how it is like to walk into a spa – the trickling water feature, the slippers that you are given at the door, the pervasive scents of aromatherapy oils, and the sounds of reflective music.

Your agency front can quite easily be transformed to take on the same ambience. Bring the experience of the spa to your customers (or potential customers) – teasing them their senses will understandably bring them closer to a decision to book themselves spa packages to experience the real thing.

Promoting family holidays? Theme parks? Decorate your agency to look like one – give out little toys to the young ones who come with their parents. Play fun music that reflects the theme. Give out candy bars. Have staff imagine they are working at a theme park.

Collaborating with other brands

Of course, if you have slightly bigger budgets, consider ways you can use entertainment streams to help market your product – using celebrities is a common way to do this, but there are others – how about collaborating with entertainment brands to do joint marketing campaigns?

Baby steps, start by being creative

Whatever your budgets, there are always ways – big and small – you can introduce experiential marketing into your business. It is about being creative and thinking outside the box.

Even if you don't, your customers certainly are, and if you are too far removed from where your customers are going, it would be a herculean task to get them back

2007 Copyright @ Abacus International.

www.abacus.com.sg