Lifestyle marketing is a technique used to take brands to the next level. It’s a way of connecting your brand with a certain lifestyle, targeting a demographic and making the company feel synonymous with the values, activities, and communities of the target market.
It’s not just major corporations that succeed through lifestyle marketing. Smaller brands and startup companies can effectively target niche and local markets in the same way, and they benefit from the fact that in-person brand activations can have a much bigger impact on a local scale than on a national one.
How to Start Lifestyle Marketing?
The first and most critical step is defining your target market. Who are the people you’re trying to reach? What’s the lifestyle you believe in? Where do you believe your brand can activate and contribute to communities?
Once you know who you’re targeting and where to find them, you can create your strategy for connecting with them. What makes them tick? What events are likely to catch their attention?
Brand Activations – Time to Meet Your Target Market
You’ve decided who you’re targeting, and now it’s time to connect with them. Both startup aspirants and established brands are increasingly using brand activations to get out into the world and create real connections with their target markets.
A brand activation is an experience, event, or some kind of engagement that, for the most part, happens in person. When a popular brewery launches a pop-up pub or when a retailer launches a branded vending machine showcasing a new product line, these are brand activations.
In-person marketing campaigns like these may reach fewer people than print, broadcast, or online advertising, but they make a much deeper impression. The moments and experiences they create can also be leveraged as part of your marketing campaign, making them a crucial part of a multi-channel advertising experience.
Leverage Portable Digital Billboards in Your Activations
One way to capitalize on a brand activation is to use portable digital display signs. While they were once quite the commitment to design and install, today, some portable digital billboards and displays are built for outdoor environments and are so easy to install that you no longer need site inspections or construction permits.
Portable digital billboards and displays are ideal for creating interactive, gamified experiences, Augmented Reality experiences, or sponsorship fulfillment. They can draw in a crowd with a unique engagement, or they can fill visitors in on the details about the strong brand. They may just be the missing link that will help you crystallize the connection between your brand and the lifestyle you’re targeting.
Establishing Brand Association
The ultimate goal of lifestyle marketing is to establish a brand association, a connection people automatically make in their minds between a brand and a quality. It’s like how Nike is associated with athletic performance, thanks to its partnerships with some of the best athletes in the world and the memorable campaigns built around those relationships.
Lifestyle marketing is about creating the desired connections in your target demographics’ minds. It requires a multi-channel approach, but real-time, in-person connections go a long way toward forging those mental associations.