Guest blog: 4 ways to use tactile marketing to engage your audience

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By Vaishali Shah, Creative-ID; Emma Soulsby Flowers; and Holly Patrick, heyyholly

Tactile marketing has rapidly become a multisensory experience for consumers, with brands using scent, touch, sound and visuals to deliver information and engage with their audience. But why do such elements play such an important role within a marketing strategy?

Touch

Tactile design and the power of print are very apparent, especially in this digital age.

“At your event, the choice of direct mail gift you hand out creates the perfect opportunity for you to engage with your audience at a level that is more meaningful and relevant to their needs. A physical gift, which you can ‘touch and feel’, as opposed to an online discount code, helps your brand cut through the digital noise and be remembered,” says Vaishali Shah, Creative-ID.

Print marketing is memorable and popular with millennials. Have catalogues including storytelling about the products and printed material to help your audience understand and connect with your brand values by demonstrating how you can solve their problems. The power of touch is undeniable. It attracts consumer attention and appeals to our love of physical products.

Florist, Emma Soulsby Flowers, states, “Flowers have an inviting tactile presence. Sometimes people can’t believe the flowers are real and touching them gives them a beautiful wonderment about mother nature and creates not only a talking point but a sensory experience”.

Sound

Sound has the capacity to affect us at an emotional level. It can be used to enhance the customer experience. Vaishali at Creative-ID advises, “By choosing the appropriate sound or music, you can create the desired mood in your customers or clients. Messages spoken in a particular tone or music playing in the background can create the kind of feeling that is appropriate to the product or service you are offering.

“At an event, brands can play appealing background music, with live performances or recorded music, to persuade visitors to stay longer.”

Visuals

“Having printed material, using paper that is textured or brochures which you need to open up or unfold, all help brands connect with their audience. We respond positively to eye-catching visuals, unusual colour combinations, different shapes and sizes, striking typography and imagery,” advises Vaishali.

“In addition to printed material, props can also create the wow effect at your event and create a sense of transporting your guests to a different environment, this is especially useful for service-based businesses where there isn’t a tangible product to demonstrate,” says Emma, Emma Soulsby Flowers.

Sarah Shuttle of Sarah Shuttle Creative comments, “The involvement of visual elements has a huge impact on how information is consumed. Adapting to the fast-paced world we live in, visual content is absorbed significantly quicker than text. When it comes to tactile marketing, visual content is quite simply more appealing than text.

“Event producers can avoid the mistake of solely using content marketing to establish and enhance a brand, and instead focus on using visual elements to build upon their strategy. From infographics to videos, branded images to logos, presentations to screenshots, there are various ways to incorporate visual elements into your tactile marketing strategy.”

Scent

Scent can transport someone to a time and place, and to give an evocative lasting memory. Emma Soulsby Flowers comments, “Brands can weave scent into a brand’s customer journey, via various touchpoints but careful consideration must be given when deciding on the actual notes of the scent to ensure the scent is in alignment with the brand and the subliminal message and memory it wants to give and leave behind.”

“The main outcome that most desire from an event is an emotional response that, in turn, creates a positive experience,” says Holly Patrick of heyyholly.

When you stimulate certain senses it releases oxytocin, this is the chemical that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. At an event, there are multiple opportunities to trigger oxytocin – a delicious sit-down meal, a scented room, a video montage, an amazing DJ, a warm vibrant atmosphere etc.

“Creating memorable moments is what lies beneath the success of any event, whether it be a small, intimate event or large-scale one,” says Holly.

Molly Hookings
Author: Molly Hookings

Molly joined the editorial team in March 2019. She has several years’ experience working in broadcast and journalism, as well as marketing and PR. Past experience includes working for the BBC and independent publishing houses. If you have a story you think Molly might be interested in, please email: molly@eventindustrynews.com