• by Scot Wheeler , August 26, 2019

You can spend a lot of time attempting to measure ROI for experiential marketing -- usually this means orders or leads generated by the event -- because these offer the most immediate evidence of value. But it’s equally important to show the impact of experiential marketing on your target consumer’s perception, affinity and advocacy -- which has been called return on experience, or ROX.

When you design an experiential activation to deliver on ROX, versus ROI, your business-driving outcomes will be significantly compounded. This means establishing KPIs that go beyond orders and leads, extending to pride and influence, and the resulting consumer behavior.

PwC recently introduced ROX as a useful way of thinking about perception, affinity and advocacy driven by an experiential engagement. This cyclical process counts the development of pride in the brand, and the cultivation action stoked by that pride, as a critical engagement between consumers and the brand.

If you measure event attendees’ brand perception and affinity (and willingness to express that affinity) you begin to determine if you can expect repeat sales to those engaged, loyal consumers. You can also uncover opportunities for sales to consumers not at the event, but influenced by the passion of those who were there.

As an example, for an automotive experiential event, ROI-driven measurement will track leads generated in a list to match back against sales. An ROX-driven event design includes brand-perception measures from pre-experience and post-experience interactions (live or digital), and delivers prompted social sharing in the experience design, with tracking of that activity. Measurement will assess the levels of influence beyond the event resulting from social sharing, and target those who expressed passion to cultivate future behavior through direct (post-event CRM) and indirect channels (newly created local influencers).

Because experiential activations allow brands to discover and build upon a consumer’s passions, experiential marketing is tailormade to develop the pride and influencer aspects of this model. This gives us the ideal jump off point for guiding behavior through the right experience design and aligned digital engagement. If you’re only focused on traditional ROI experiential metrics, you’ll miss the opportunity to measure and optimize against the equally powerful, if slightly more complex, metrics held in the ROX approach.