Author: info@studiozphotobooths.com

A brand activation is one of the sure-fire ways to drive consumer engagement and loyalty. However, finding the right strategy can be challenging. Here, we discuss how a digital photo booth could be the immersive experience you need to activate your audience. 

What Is a Brand Activation? 

While traditional marketing utilizes billboards and digital advertising uses optimized content to reach its audience, these tools don’t give customers real-time interactions with a brand. By contrast, brand activation involves businesses using branded experiences to directly interact with their customer base to spur them into brand engagement. As a marketing strategy, it focuses on using immersive campaigns to increase brand awareness in a positive way, drive client loyalty, and boost sales. 

However, while the customer taking action is crucial to brand activation, it’s vital to note that brand activation strategies primarily focus on creating a personal relationship with the consumer, hence the need for personal interaction. 

Digital brand activation involves using digital marketing tools and techniques to drive direct interaction between a brand and its consumer base. In digital brand activation, all forms of online marketing tools come into play, including social media and video marketing. 

Building a Brand Activation Strategy Using a Photo Booth 

Brand activation photo booths are among the most popular brand activation strategies used today. They’re easy to incorporate into any branded campaign/experience and appeal to today’s digital audience. Everyone loves photographs, and video or photo booths make the whole picture-taking experience even cooler, using features like Snapchat-style lenses, customized images, and unique photo experiences and outputs guests cannot recreate on their own. 

When guests post those photos on social media after the event, they share their great experiences with your brand with others, and thus photo booths become an extremely effective digital activation strategy. 

Furthermore, digital photo booth campaigns leave a lasting positive impression on customers at a branded event as it is an immersive experience. This perception could be the most significant factor in influencing customers to take the next step in their brand journey. Briefly, we’ll look at some of the different methods of brand activation and how you can use them for a photo booth activation campaign:

Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing is the most popular form of brand activation. It majorly involves branded events that enable customers to have hands-on interactions with a brand, product line, objectives, and core values. 

Use a Photo Booth to Connect with Your Guests Emotionally 

These brand-centric events give consumers an experience that engages with them on an emotional level and influences their decision to engage the business. Businesses can leverage digital photo booths to create these immersive experiences for their audience. For example, a fashion brand could organize a themed gala where guests can take pictures of their attire in a unique branded photo booth with a custom set that matches the gala’s theme. As such, they get to dress glamorously for one exciting evening while also creating lasting memories of the event through photographs.

Digital Marketing & Photo Booths

In today’s digital world, digital marketing is a crucial part of every advertising strategy. It involves interacting with a business’ customer base using online tools and platforms. But how does this strategy work with a digital photo booth? It’s quite simple; brands can customize pictures taken during a photo booth activation campaign with any branding or message the company is looking to push. This could be the business’ logo, name, and hashtag, but you could also choose to place guests in their own custom advertisement or scene, transporting them into the world of the brand. For example, with a greenscreen, guests can feel like characters in their favorite TV show! 

After the activation experience, participants share their photographs on social media platforms, thus advertising the company across the digital space. Content shared across social media from brand-centric events can influence online audiences toward patronizing a brand. 

Product Sampling Campaigns

Businesses primarily use product sampling campaigns to roll out new merchandise. Customers at these events get to try out the latest product lines for free. Brands can incorporate digital photo booths into these campaigns as well. For example, they could attach giveaways and free trials of the new product line to customers who participate in the photo booth. Tech companies are an example of businesses that could leverage this strategy.

What Is the Process of Brand Activation? 

Like every other marketing strategy, brand activation must be a well-planned process in order to be an effective campaign. Below are some of the crucial steps to take to get the most out of brand activation:

Know Your Objectives

You have to be specific about what you want to achieve to enable you to get the best out of your brand activation campaign. A clear understanding of your goals will help you organize your campaign to fit your objectives. 

For a digital photo booth, you could decide if your mission is to increase brand awareness or get a new product line out. This will help you decide which brand activation strategy to use. 

Understand Your Audience

As a brand, you must know what appeals to your consumer base to serve them better. When planning a brand marketing campaign, this understanding of your customers’ wants gives you insight into organizing your event to fit them. This factor is why a brand-centric photo booth is one of the best brand activation strategies to use. It appeals to today’s digital audience that loves taking pictures. If you want to reach a new crowd of millennials and Gen Z customers, then a photo booth is your best bet. 

Build Around a Budget 

Budgeting is a crucial aspect of every marketing strategy. You want to minimize cost while also getting the most out of your campaign. A digital photo booth is also useful in this regard. It’s relatively cheap to set up and get running, in comparison to the overall campaign budget, and it’ll provide the immersive experience your customers are seeking at a budget-friendly price. 

Maximize Social Media 

Social media content is effective in increasing brand awareness and engagement. As such, ensure you adequately utilize all available social media platforms to interact with your audience throughout your campaign. For example, suppose you’re rolling out a new product and using a brand-centric photo booth experience to market it. In that case, you can share information about the merchandise and the free trials for customers who participate in the campaign beforehand. After the event, you can also share some of the participants’ photographs on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Encourage guests to share their content from your branded experience as well, and offer incentives for those that do.

Measuring Brand Activation ROI

In brand activation, ROI is a tricky thing to measure. However, the key is first to know your objectives before kick-starting your strategy. Knowing what you want to achieve can help you monitor some key performance indicators (KPIs) during and after the campaign. 

For example, if your photo booth activation campaign’s goal is brand awareness, a full custom data capture can be run, gathering the information you’ll need during the activation. 

And after the event, you can track certain relevant information, like the amount of content shared from the event. This metric is why you should have a hashtag for your event. You can also monitor the number of interactions you’re getting on the shared content and the number of followers on your social media due to these conversations. Many photo activations can also integrate Google Analytic tracking codes to get real-time data for a deeper dive into metrics.

On the other hand, if your objective is generating conversions, then the number of email sign-ups you received during and after the photo booth campaign is one of the KPIs you can track. You can also use other key performance indicators to measure the ROI on your brand activation strategy, depending on what you aim to achieve.

The Bottom Line

So, you’re now excited to get to work on embarking on a brand activation campaign involving a photo booth, but where should you start? Give us at Studio Z a try! We’re far more than just a photo booth company; we offer a number of complementary services, such as the ROI measuring tools and brand-immersion elements discussed above. We have everything you’ll need to make your brand activation a glowing success. Tell us about your event so we can get started!

At Studio Z, we know a thing or two about photo and video activations. We have a wide array of options to suit your next event, brand activation, conference, expo, etc. If we don’t currently offer it, we can create it. Photographers and event marketers at heart, we are ready for the challenge. Reach out and start the conversation.

The world is changing, and business events are no exception. Everything and everyone has gone online! If you want to continue growing your business, you need to adapt as soon as possible. New technology will help you implement the necessary changes and make your next company event a raging success! We have one thing in particular to suggest you add to your virtual events: a photo booth.

Why Have So Many Events Gone Virtual These Days?       

While virtual events have existed for quite some time (especially for remote working companies!) the event industry has tremendously changed with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone wanted to respect people’s lives and keep social distancing as much as possible, but the need to connect with others still existed. So what did we do? We shifted online! The choice was clear: it was time to start hosting different virtual events. Digital tools help us celebrate important moments with our friends and colleagues and still be socially responsible! As technology advances, digital experiences just keep improving. The photo booth for online events is a part of that change that will stay long after the pandemic is over. 

Events That Need an Online Photo Booth

Although it might seem easier, you need to invest the same amount of effort into planning and hosting a virtual event as you would with hosting an in-person event. The cost will be lower, so budgeting does become a lot easier. However, engaging your attendees becomes way harder. You don’t have a physical venue and, hence, lack the networking options.When your event is virtual, the content is the driving force! Doesn’t matter whether it’s an expo, conference, webinar, or a hybrid event; you need quality content to keep your guests interested and happy. You should focus on creating an amazing agenda with important keynote speakers and engaging sessions. However, you also need something off the agenda so people can take a break and engage with each other. For example, a chat room is a great tool, not only for this type of engagement but also for asking questions to the speakers. Another tool for engagement (and your marketing efforts) is, of course, a photo booth! In-person events are almost unimaginable without them, so why would virtual ones be an exception?

How a Photo Booth Will Help to Promote, Sell, and Reduce the Cost of Your Next Conference or Expo

For your conference or expo to be successful, people need to talk about it! And pictures are worth more than 1000 words. That’s why Instagram is so hot right now. Pictures are everything, and businesses know it. From restaurants to movie theaters, businesses are lining up to be Instagrammable. Everybody is online, and your event desperately needs an online presence. If nobody is posting about your event, did it really happen? In the eyes of the consumers on social media, it didn’t. You should improve your digital marketing campaign with available technology and include photo booths in your events. If you have a photo booth that creates amazing snaps, people will share them! A promotion via people’s social media can be better than any type of ad you can purchase. That kind of advertising for your event can help you stay way ahead of your competitors. Get a photo booth that will generate shareable pics, and you can actually reduce the overall cost of your conference. Just imagine the amount of traffic you will receive through social media platforms. 

The Right Technology to Make a Successful Virtual Event

Use technology to make the photo booth a natural part of the event. And of course, don’t overcomplicate things. Even at corporate events, people just want to have fun. Our photo booth for online events is so easy to use. There’s no need to download an app because it’s browser-based. This means that you can just share a link with your guests, and then they can access the virtual photo booth on any device. The best part? Virtual photo booth is completely customizable for brands. We took care of everything, from top to bottom! You can customize the photo booth’s user interface (UI), backgrounds, photo frames, buttons, stickers, boomerang frames, HTML email, and URL link to make your virtual photo booth branded and unique. The guests can use the digital photo booth as they wish. They may choose different templates and pick a background, capture gifs and boomerangs, and pose to their likings once you decide what kind of options are available! You can also create digital mosaics out of people snaps and design custom surveys to get people’s feedback. So check out virtual photo booth specs to find out what kind options you have!We should note that optional printing add on is also available. So if you wish you can buy the prints for the guests that chose single-image designs! Even if your guests weren’t physically present, they can get a printed copy of the photo delivered to their home. That’s a valuable memory secured. 

3 Tips to Utilize Photo Booths for Online Expos

To help you out, here are our top tips on how to create a unique online experience with a virtual photo booth: 

• Be creative and inspire others. Add different effects, filters, and background options to inspire people’s creativity. 
• Use surveys to get feedback. You can include a couple of brief questions about the event in the virtual photo booth so your guests can give you their opinion. Getting feedback from attendees is immensely valuable! You can use this data to make improvements and host even better events in the future. 
• Make sure to brand your company accordingly. Create a unique event logo and add it to your existing company logo to make sure photos from the virtual booth stand out. 

In-Person Photo Booths vs. Photo Booths for Online Conferences

To compare these two photo booths, let’s go one step back and think about what is special about a photo booth in the first place. Photo booths can help you save and cherish one unique moment from a particular event (whether it’s a business conference, a birthday, or a festival). Virtual photo booths serve the same purpose. You can use it to catch a moment and make it a long-lasting memory. So, in essence, there aren’t huge differences between in-person photo booths and online photo booths. Naturally, digitalization offers additional choices. With our photo booth for online expos or conferences, you can also create gifs or make mosaics out of your guests’ snaps. On top of everything, there’s no waiting in lines! You don’t have to spend an hour waiting to take a photo because a great snap is just a click away. 

How Do Photo Booths for Online Events Engage Your Attendees?    

More than other engagement options for the attendees, photo booths can help you boost your event. Remember, people love to take and share photos, so give them the option to do so! Photo booths use creative technology to connect people, meaning you can also use them to break the ice and start off the event. People can take snaps and use them as profile pictures, too.

After the event has started, guests will use photo booths to take a break and have some fun. They’ll create (silly or professional) photos to share on social media, which will, as we said, additionally promote the event. Experience tells us that people will also share the pics in the chat rooms to lighten the mood, especially when it’s an internal company event. The options are limitless when you have creative team members to help you out!

Final Thoughts

In these strange times, online events are dominating the business scene. You need something to make your company’s event unique, and a photo booth can be that something! Let’s rock your next virtual event together.

At Studio Z, we know a thing or two about photo and video activations. We have a wide array of options to suit your next event, brand activation, conference, expo, etc. If we don’t currently offer it, we can create it. Photographers and event marketers at heart, we are ready for the challenge. Reach out and start the conversation.