Keepin’ It Real with Learning Code #24
- Jen Smith
- October 8, 2024
- 9:22 pm
Put the Power of Real-World Experience into Practice
Incorporating real-world experience into marketing strategy is essential for enhancing memory retention, engagement, and practical application of knowledge.
The most effective learning occurs when it is deeply rooted in real-world experiences. Learning Code 24 emphasizes the critical importance of integrating real-world experience into Meaningful Marketing™ strategies to significantly enhance consumer impact, encourage long-term memory formation, and sometimes even shift consumer perspective and behavior.
The Science Behind Real-World Experience
Neuroscience reveals that real-world experiences can increase neurotransmitter activity necessary for long-term memory formation by as much as 500 percent! The genes and brains of consumers are pre-set by evolution to adopt information most effectively in real-world environments. This predisposition makes experiential marketing a powerful tool for creating lasting memories and meaningful campaign outcomes.
Key Characteristics of Experiential Marketing:
- High Engagement: Real-world experiences engage multiple senses, leading to increased neural activity and memory formation.
- Relevance: Taking in information in real-world contexts makes information more relevant and easier to recall.
- Enhanced Neural Connections: Physical experiences cause the massive simultaneous firing of neurons, which is crucial for long-term memory formation.
The Impact of Real-World Experience on Consumers
When marketing campaigns incorporate real-world experiences, the following positive outcomes can occur:
- Increased Memory Retention: Consumers remember information more effectively when it is tied to real-world experiences.
- Greater Engagement: Engaging multiple senses and providing hands-on experiences keeps consumers motivated and interested.
- Improved Problem-Solving: Real-world scenarios enhance consumers' ability to apply knowledge to informing/directing their intent. It might lead them to want to learn more about a brand (self-educate), compare it to other brands (shop), find where and how to get the brand’s products or services (navigate), or become a buyer (transaction/conversion).
Strategies to Incorporate Real-World Experience
To effectively integrate real-world experiences into your marketing campaigns, consider the following strategies:
Interactive Workshops and Webinars
For example, a health and wellness app can host interactive workshops where users actively participate in fitness and nutrition planning, receiving immediate feedback and guidance from experts.
Product Demos and Hands-On Trials
A tech company launching a new software suite can implement this strategy by offering hands-on trial sessions. Users can engage in guided demo sessions where they navigate through real-life scenarios using the software, solving practical problems and learning its features through direct application.
Experiential Pop-Up Events
We’ve seen this done by cosmetics brands; they create a pop-up event where visitors can try out new products in real time. Attendees can participate in makeup tutorials, test products, and receive personalized skincare consultations, making the learning and experience tangible.
Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) Experiences
If you’re an avid follower of ours, you may recall from our blog on the 11 Biological Preferences, that we mentioned IKEA set the bar for this tactic when they integrated AR into their “Place” app, allowing customers to visualize furniture in their own homes. Customers can use the app to place virtual furniture in their rooms, adjust it to see how it fits, and make purchase decisions based on this immersive interaction.
Customer-Driven Content Creation
Any brand from any industry background can do this with testimonial or personal experience article submission mechanisms, where we put the brand narrative into the customer’s hands and let them say their piece or tell their story. This is a very popular strategy in the travel industry, for reasons that aren’t hard to surmise. A real story about a real person’s experience at a real destination is going to have a real impact on a potential customer’s decision on whether or not to follow in that existing customer’s footsteps.
Gamification of Learning
Online educational platforms love this strategy and benefit hugely from it. Duolingo, a language learning platform, is a great brand to model your own tactics after if gamification is a strategy you’d like to try. To encourage users to keep coming back, they incorporate mechanisms like points you can spend in app, competitions against other app users with leaderboards to showcase standings, and badges for when users acquire new skills. This strategy really ties in with understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivators—another component of the code-24 science—and aids us marketers in creating campaigns that not only attract customers but also foster loyalty and long-term engagement because it’s fun. By recognizing and leveraging both types of motivators, marketers can create more holistic and impactful strategic marketing models that cater to diverse audiences.
Field Testing and Feedback
An outdoor gear brand can do this by inviting customers to test new products in real-world conditions. Customers use the products while adventuring outdoors and provide feedback, contributing to product development and feeling directly involved in the brand’s innovation process.
Community Engagement Initiatives
For example, let’s say you’re designing a campaign for a community-based app like Nextdoor, and the objective is to build local communities and foster real-world connections. Hard to do in an ever-increasingly digital world. But, Nextdoor did that very thing by simply recognizing that the degree of separation digitalization brings about ironically leads to human longing for community. They built “an online medium that drives offline connections,” to quote their CEO, and designed the platform so that people could do this conveniently. And convenience has and always will be a highly appealing thing to human beings because our brains are hard-wired to be drawn down the path of least resistance.
Practical Applications in Marketing
- Experiential Marketing: Create marketing campaigns that offer customers real-world experiences, such as product trials, demonstrations, and immersive events.
- Customer Testimonials: Use real-world customer testimonials and case studies to highlight the practical benefits and applications of your products or services.
- Interactive Content: Develop interactive content that allows customers to engage with your brand in meaningful ways, such as virtual reality tours or interactive product demos.
Learning Code #24: Key Takeaways
Incorporating real-world experience into marketing strategy is essential for enhancing memory retention, engagement, and practical application of knowledge. By leveraging firsthand or virtual experiences, gamification, and even community engagement, we can create very powerful impact that engages, motivates, and drives real action from our audience.
At CoreCentrica, we’re committed to leveraging the latest neuroscientific insights to create Meaningful MarketingTM strategies that resonate deeply with your audience. Start incorporating these insights into your campaigns today!
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