Whenever a customer walks inside your store, they get numerous options to explore across the store. It can be 20 different products from 5 different categories. It can also be products from various brands across the same category. However, the real question here would be:
How to make the customer engage with the products and initiate a purchase?
The answer to the question lies in appropriate brand activation. From what the customer is going to choose, to ensuring that the customer buys the product of your brand, retail activation has all the answers you need.
Brand activation has become extremely essential for brands all over the world. No matter what products you are selling or who your target customers are, only the right retail activation agency with effective brand activation strategies can drive the desired results for your brand. In simple words, brand activation basically involves an experience offered to the customers to enhance brand engagement and awareness.
What Is Retail Activation And Why Is It Important In 2024?
In today’s time, online shopping has surged to unimaginable levels. This surge was especially fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, according to surveys, in-store shopping is back in trend after the pandemic, with almost 47% of people shopping in-store daily or weekly. Online shopping continues to be extremely popular in 2024, but almost 60% of men and 52% of women shoppers wanted to visit a store to check out a product before buying it, reported a survey.
This makes it clear that modern brands have the opportunity to interact with customers face-to-face and make an impact on them. This is where a retail activation agency can make a difference for your brand, offering customers meaningful in-store or even multichannel experiences, and enhancing engagement and brand awareness. Retail activation, also known as experiential retail activation, can be defined as the medium to deliver an immersive and memorable moment that helps engage customers with the brand. It is also known as in-store activation or shopper marketing.
A retail activation strategy is all about creating indulging and compelling in-person experiences for a customer. This is mostly done through visual storytelling within the retail space. A retail activation agency makes use of numerous channels, mediums, and tools to execute brand activation campaigns across various channels. To be more specific, retail activation and brand activation are experiential marketing campaigns with the same goal of increasing customers’ engagement and deepening their connection with your brand.
Why Is Retail Activation Essential In Today’s Time?
A retail activation agency is essential for successfully implementing a range of brand activation campaigns. They also create and host live, engaging, and in-person marketing events for memorable experiences. Their common instruments include:
- Retail pop-ups
- Immersive multimedia event activations
- Innovative trade show displays
Coming to retail activation, which can be called a part of brand activation, has gained popularity in today’s time due to its potential and success in helping customers connect with brands and enhance engagement. Depending on what you need for your brand, you need a specialist retail activation agency. Such an agency can make the best of the retail architecture, creating the perfect space to make maximum impact on walk-in customers.
Retail activation can be implemented in a range of ways with a lot of retail fit out companies offering attractive retail pop-up displays and other instruments to help your brand stand out. Coming to brand activation companies, there are different types of companies offering different kinds of services to help “activate your brand”. The most common types of brand activation companies include:
- Retail activation agency
- Retail fit out companies
- Fabrication studios
- Experiential marketing agency
- Event planner/event marketer
- Design companies
- Experiential design & production company
How Does A Retail Activation Agency Help Your Brand?
Brand marketing and promotion is not all about advertisements and retail pop-up displays. It goes way beyond that, creating meaningful and memorable experiences for customers when they are interacting with your brand within a retail space. There are different kinds of retail activation campaigns that can drive the desired results for your brand, based on what your industry is, and who your target customers are, as well as a range of other deciding factors.
Numerous renowned brands across the globe, including some names like Adidas, M&M’s, and most notably, Ikea, have been making use of retail activation strategies to create immersive experiences for their customers within their stores. There are a range of retail activation campaigns and strategies that are usually implemented based on the brand’s identity and objectives. Let us take a look at some of them.
- Experiential marketing or “retail-tainment”: It is said that customers look for more than just products when shopping. Experiential marketing is everything that offers customers an experience and not just the product when they are shopping.
- Sampling campaigns: Sampling campaigns can make a huge impact on sales if done right. Brands can also gather valuable feedback and improve on products, making them more suitable for the target customers.
- In-store brand activation: This mostly includes the most common marketing techniques within a store, including demos, promotions, and events. It works because a survey indicates that almost 61% of shoppers consider surprise gifts and offers to be the best way that a brand can interact with them.
Finding The Right Retail Activation Agency For Your Brand
Whether you need just a design company, fabrication partners, retail fit out companies, or a full-service retail activation agency, depends on your brand’s objectives. While there are numerous options in the market, the right company will offer you the ideal services and create the perfect experiences for your brand’s target customers.
Roots Advertising LLC is a leading retail activation agency. Beyond just retail pop-up displays, such a retail activation agency can offer all-encompassing services right from conceptualization to implementation, making the best use of the retail architecture and creating memorable experiences for the customers of your brand. This leads to increased engagement and interaction and a boost in sales and your overall ROI!
