The 10 Biggest Challenges for Brand Activation Strategies | AnyRoad

The 10 Biggest Challenges for Brand Activation Strategies

Table of Contents

You know what they say: if it can go wrong, trust that it will. And every brand marketer knows that goes double for live activations and events.

We’ve heard it time and time again. The ten biggest problems brand activations run into are:

  1. A lack of consumer visibility
  2. Unclear starting goals
  3. Running out of budget
  4. No bandwidth to scale
  5. Low event attendance
  6. Zero data capture process
  7. Hard to demonstrate ROI
  8. Lost on how to track event success
  9. Disjointed global strategies
  10. Grueling, disconnected tech stack processes

We see you; each of these is a roadblock that you or your team will run into at some point or another. So here are all the ways things can go wrong and how you can solve them.

Lack of Consumer Visibility

When you’re in the thick of an event, seeing the crowds can feel like a major success. But then, you get home and realize you have no real idea of who any of the attendees were or where they’re coming from.

A lack of guest visibility at brand activations is a serious problem when trying to reach a specific audience or even build consumer profiles to help brand awareness.

Solution: Include Data Capture Tools

Data capture is the process of collecting important information related to your attendees. A data capture tool can be software, a form, or even pen and paper surveys that ask specific questions about age, gender, and other demographic tidbits that help you fully understand who’s coming to your activations and events.

Unclear Starting Goals

Managing your calendar of events might seem like a goal in and of itself, but each event should come with a purpose. You're setting yourself up for failure when you don’t have a clear starting goal.

Solution: Make Goals Part of The Planning Process

When you make goals part of your initial planning process, each decision can become a chance to hone in on making that chosen goal happen. It helps you avoid vague generalities that will lead to weaker marketing results.

Make sure your goals are SMART:

Running Out of Budget

Between late fees, inflation, and hidden or unexpected costs, an event budget doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to. Running out of cash isn’t just a fear; it can be a reality if you’re not careful or lucky.

Solution: Plan Your Budget Early Out With Contingency Plans and Tweak Mid-Execution

Plan your budget and business case as early as possible, with researched decisions of who to hire, what to buy, and what travel you need.

No Bandwidth to Scale

With planning, strategizing, and execution in the air, scaling your strategy can often be a juggling ball too far.

Solution: Choose One Success to Build on and Automate What You Can

When facing the challenge of scaling, you can start small and build by picking one success and area of opportunity and breaking them down into improvement goals.

Low Event Attendance

There’s no worse feeling than putting your all into an activation series and having no one show. It’s not only disappointing; it’s embarrassing.

Solution: Re-Evaluate Consumer Personas and Hit Them Where They Live

When you see low attendance, it’s time to re-evaluate if your activation location and how you market that event are all the best choices for your target audience.

Zero Data Analysis

Great, you have your zero-party or first-party data. But now what? If you don’t have a process for what to do with the data after your experience, you can only take your learnings and effort so far.

Solution: Break Down The Dream Process and What Will Happen to The Data Once You Have It

Don’t just be satisfied with the data; let’s take it to the next level.

Lost on How to Track Event Success

You’re not just planning and executing a good time when you're running activations. You should have a goal in mind to judge whether your events were successful.

Solution: Pick a Metric and Hone in on It Strategically

To get around this brand activation problem, you must pick a metric and improve it strategically through your events.

Hard to Demonstrate ROI

Proving return on investment for brand activations is a shockingly complicated process for a simple concept.

Solution: Get Into The Weeds With Easy Activation Goals and Bring in Other Teams

When it comes to goal setting, the simpler the better.

Disjointed Global Strategies

In a larger company, a brand experience isn’t limited to one country; it’s a global endeavor.

Solution: Unify The Teams Under One Banner

Set aside time to add to a shared reporting document folder or even use an activations platform to track multiple countries and efforts simultaneously.

Siloed Tech Stack

When you use a thousand and one tech solutions to run your day-to-day, even the smallest request becomes a full-time lift.

Solution: Bring The Team on One End-to-End Platform That Can Serve Their Needs Throughout All Activation Phases

When you use an in-person solution to collect information at activations, there’s often no back-end solution to keep that information and sort through it.

Conclusion

Brand activation strategies run into these ten problems constantly, so knowing how to get around the most common roadblocks will benefit you in the long run.