The entire shopping mall experience has become increasingly important to consumers, rather than just the shopping and transaction. In order to drive footfall, increase dwell time and enhance brand engagement, shopping mall experiential campaigns are one of the most powerful tools to achieve that. When done right, shopping mall experiential campaigns can transform a routine visit into an unforgettable journey.
What Are Shopping Mall Experiential Campaigns?
Shopping mall experiential campaigns are immersive marketing activations designed to engage visitors through interactive, emotional and often sensory-driven experiences. These campaigns go beyond traditional displays, creating hands-on experiences that can connect shopping malls with their audiences in much more memorable ways.
Experiential campaigns succeed because they foster emotional connections, build rapports with visitors, leaving a lasting memory. Shoppers are more likely to remember and share experiences that surprise or involve them directly. Whether it’s a child making their own gingerbread man at a Christmas activation or a family posing with an immersively themed pirates event, these moments encourage sharing on social media platforms (user generated content), positive brand association, and repeated visits.
From an ROI perspective, experiential campaigns also help malls stand out in a competitive retail landscape, offering opportunities to increase foot traffic, encourage longer stays and more.
Key Elements of a Successful Shopping Mall Experiential Campaign
To make your shopping mall truly unforgettable, take these elements into account:
Thematic Relevance
There are the obvious 4 seasonal campaigns that have proven time and again that perform well: Christmas, Summer, Halloween and Easter. These periods lend themselves to storytelling campaigns. For example, a dino-themed experiential campaign with a themed event area and activities, dinosaur props, dinosaur trail and live performers has always proven very popular.
Key Dates
It goes without saying that there are certain periods of the year when the shopping centre would naturally be much busier. Basing the experiential campaign dates on past data can help boost the footfall dramatically, for example, around school holidays - 3 weeks of half terms, 2.5 weeks of Christmas holiday, Easter week, 6-8 weeks of Summer activation. As it is with seasonal celebrations, it’s crucial not to host campaigns past festive event dates.
Traditional Marketing
Whilst these shopping mall experiential campaigns have been proven successful as a tool for shopping centres, it is often not a standalone strategy. It’s important to integrate with social media, extending the mall’s marketing by also building an online buzz. As part of the experiential campaign, it is also very easy to include digital aspects such as hashtags, QR code, encouraging user-generated content, online awareness, app downloads and more!
Partnership Opportunities
Collaborate with brands, local artists, or influencers to co-create activations. Co-branded experiences not only increase campaign visibility and awareness with existing popular brands!
Metrics for Success
In order to improve any future marketing for your shopping mall, it’s essential to collect data proving and improving ROI of these experiential campaigns. Tracking key metrics like footfall, dwell time, average spend, digital downloads, hashtag usage, customer feedback surveys, etc. can be useful for tracking engagement.
At Odin Events, we’ve had 15+ years in delivering successful events across the UK. If you’re looking for shopping mall experiential campaign ideas, contact our events team and learn more about our bespoke event services for shopping centres. You can also read our last blog to see our experiential marketing ideas for shopping centres!