Over the past few years, experiential marketing has become a powerful tool for beauty brands, driving consumer connections through immersive, memorable encounters. The global experiential marketing spend is predicted to reach $128.35 billion by the end of 2024, surpassing pre-pandemic levels in a 10.5% jump that outpaces the 9.7% growth seen in 2023.
“Experiential marketing is fundamentally the creation of a physical experience or a stunt that tells a story to an audience about your brand that evokes an emotional connection,” Katie Peake, co-founder and Creative Director of creative experiential agency Backlash, tells BeautyMatter.
In the beauty sector, 84% of brands have increased their experiential marketing budgets over the past three years (38% significantly and 46% slightly), with 10%-30% of overall company budgets now attributed to events and immersive activities that enhance customer experiences.
According to research from experiential marketing agency Gradient, brands are specifically investing in initiatives such as in-retail rituals (62%), livestreams (56%), partnerships and collaborations (41%), and influencer content creation (36%). Notable industry examples include temporary branded shoppable events such as Sephoria, Roblox activations, and other immersive gaming campaigns, as well as social media livestream selling. The primary objectives for hosting such experiential events and brand experiences include content creation (51%), innovation/test marketing (49%), and customer relationship management (41%).
The rise of interest and monetary share for experiential marketing can also be attributed to growing consumer demand, where beauty customers are increasingly seeking brands that deliver authentic out-of-the-box experiences. Nowadays, consumers are becoming more skeptical of traditional advertising and generic marketing tactics. Instead, they want to engage with brands that understand their individuality and offer immersive, personalized experiences. Specifically, 75% of consumers now expect personalized experiences from beauty brands.
"It's not enough to promote a product anymore—brands must create moments that make customers feel seen, understood, and part of the brand's journey,” Pauline Oudin, CEO of Gradient, tells BeautyMatter. “The experiential era allows beauty brands to connect with their consumers on a deeper level—creating stronger brand affinity and engagement.”
As experiential marketing becomes widely embraced across the industry, it's important to note that its value lies in strategic execution rather than mere participation. To set business on the right track, BeautyMatter investigates the challenges of experiential marketing, identifying how these challenges can be overcome to create the path to success.
Authentic Aspirations
In a saturated market, consumers look for originality when deciding which brand gets their buck. To put it into numbers, 86% of shoppers state that authenticity matters when deciding what brands they support—meaning that staying true to brand messaging and principles is key when delving into experiential marketing.
Peake explains that due to a heavy number of beauty brands now involving themselves in experiential marketing, some brands miss the mark by trying to copy others' achievements; however, a lack of the authenticity consumers desire can lead to unsuccessful outcomes. “We tend to find that some brands want to copy other industry famous campaigns, hoping the success from other brand activations will rub off on theirs,” she says. “Ultimately success comes from brave and insightful creativity that leads the industry—so original thinking is crucial.”
James Barnes, co-founder and Business Director of Backlash, further emphasizes his business partners' point of view, explaining that “effective activations are not driven by fleeting trends, but by a deep understanding of the strategic building blocks that ensure the campaign aligns with the brand’s business objectives.”
Barnes recommends that businesses use essential brand-specific data to navigate an experiential strategy. This includes taking into account key factors such as consumer behavior and reactions to past campaigns, which will help to navigate important aspects of experiential marketing including decisions such as location or platform selection—ensuring reflection on how these choices will resonate with target audiences.
Barnes suggests that brands reflect on three main points in order to remain authentic in experiential marketing. “Important questions to think about when developing a brief are ‘How do you want customers to think and feel?’ ‘What is it you want them to remember about your brand so that they come back to you?’ Or is it simply ‘We want to be disruptive and massively shareable,’” he says. “Once we know those answers, the fun can begin. When you layer bold, innovative creativity on top of a solid strategic foundation, that’s when you create an experience that truly resonates and drives impact for the brand.”
Key takeaway: Authenticity is crucial for experiential marketing success, with many shoppers prioritizing it when choosing brands, emphasizing the need for original, insight-driven strategies that align with brand values and resonate deeply with target audiences.
Creative Bravery
Across marketing, being creatively brave and bold is important to stand out, and holding back from doing so has its pushbacks. “At first brands can hesitate to push boundaries with bold, innovative concepts, often due to concerns about straying too far from the brand’s established identity, or a lack of focus on direct sales. This can result in watered-down creativity that doesn’t capture attention or deliver meaningful engagement,” Peake explains.
In order to be creatively brave, brands must be open-minded to pushing the boundaries. “When starting the concept process it's best to find inspiration everywhere—not just by looking at what other brands are doing. I find that if you want to create unique or disruptive ideas you need to be inspired by anything and everything and approach ideation with an open mind,” says Peake.
Oftentimes, creative bravery can stem from personal experiences that leave a lasting memory. “My best ideas have come from pulling on my own personal experiences and then stripping them right down to a singular thought that can then be layered with design and interactions that are suitable for the brand I'm working with,” she continues.
Personal experiences and fond memories create the perfect foundation for creative ideas as they spark emotion, which is the key to engaging the consumer. Creating a sense of emotional connection is proven to be a significant driver of consumer loyalty, responsible for 43% of business value. Moreover, according to Harvard Business Review, it is proved that over time, customers who reach the pinnacle of the brand emotional connection scale bring 52% more value than consumers who are simply “highly satisfied.”
“Successful experiential is meant to evoke emotions and the brand is responsible for how they want customers to think and feel,” Peake adds. “People remember experiences that resonate on a deeper level, so tapping into emotions and creating lasting impressions is key—this ensures guests come away feeling valued and more likely to share their positive experience with friends and family.”
Peake notes that businesses often pose a threat to their own success in experiential marketing by overlooking the value of the consumers' memorable emotions from interactions. “Often, brands only think about how they will look outwardly to customers [during the experiential campaign],” she states. “They don’t think about what the average of 400-2,000 people who attend will be thinking about the brand a week later when they are telling their friends, colleagues, or family about it.” However, emotional connections should be prioritized, as 71% of consumers who had an emotional experience with a brand state they are willing to recommend its services to others.
These emotional connections are most effectively created through compelling themes and storylines that resonate with audiences on a personal level. “By crafting a concept or narrative that mirrors real-life experiences or aspirations, brands can foster deeper engagement and connection," says Peake. “Leading with a concept or theme that connects with real people is the key to landing successful experiential campaigns, as the role is to create a story or world that customers can connect with.”
Oudin further emphasizes the importance of this approach in beauty marketing. “The future of beauty marketing isn’t just about selling perfect skin; it’s about selling a moment, a feeling, a story,” she exclaims. “Those who master this art will lead the industry.”
Key takeaway: Emotional connections and creative bravery are imperative for impactful experiential marketing that leaves lasting impressions, fosters consumer loyalty, and drives word-of-mouth advocacy, ultimately offering more long-term value than simply focusing on immediate outward appearance or direct sales.
Diverting from Direct Sales
According to Gradient, compared to other industries, beauty and skincare brands place a stronger emphasis on direct sales when it comes to experiential marketing. In fact, 64% of beauty businesses believe sales to be an important outcome of experiential marketing, with 44% marking it as the most important factor.
However, experts warn that prioritizing sales as an experiential marketing KPI can often lead to disappointment, as success is better off measured based on long-term consumer interactions with the brand. "Measuring success in experiential marketing can be challenging," notes Oudin. "It's not just about direct sales; it's about how people feel after engaging with your brand. The key is finding the right tools to track and analyze these emotional connections.”
Barnes reaffirms Oudin’s positioning on sales measurement. “While driving sales is certainly an important objective, the primary focus for most brands when creating experiential marketing campaigns should be to generate brand awareness and create an immersive, ownable brand experience.”
Notably, however, for brands that remain committed to direct sales, pop-ups are often the best avenue to go down when considering experiential marketing strategies that increase brand sales. This is due to consumers being influenced by the temporariness of such spaces, with many concerned that the venue and product may not be there when they next return to the area. Specifically, 79% of people who attend a pop-up make a purchase—this figure rises to 87% amongst Gen Z, and 70% of consumers become repeat customers after experiencing a brand in real life.
However, Barnes notes that even within pop-ups, direct sales should not always be a top priority. “Pop-up experience-driven approaches should typically prioritize brand awareness and consumer engagement, with sales being a secondary consideration or an opportunity for testing,” he says. “Pop-ups are particularly valuable for brands that don’t have physical stores—whether they’re sold through multi-brand retailers or are D2C brands—as they offer a unique opportunity to engage with consumers in a fully branded space without the constraints of traditional retail environments.” When executed correctly, pop-ups can do wonders for brand awareness, with 95% of respondents who visited a pop-up claiming it had had a positive impact on their perception of the brand, with another 73% saying that it had made them want to see or hear more from the brand in question.
Key takeaway: With experiential marketing, long-term success lies in fostering brand awareness, and consumer engagement—outcomes that create lasting impact beyond immediate transactions.
Retaining ROI
For many beauty businesses, a frequent pain point that comes with experiential campaigns and events comes down to budget, especially for those who have not executed such strategies before. In total, 64% of beauty and skincare businesses name budget size and allocation as the biggest challenge faced with experiential marketing, compared to other industries with an average of 51%.
Gradient outlines that budget plans can be difficult to navigate due to the challenge of measuring ROI from experiential marketing, with 36% of brands naming proving ROI as their biggest hurdle. “This may be due to the more subjective nature of measuring customer advocacy and loyalty, which can be harder to quantify compared to more straightforward metrics like sales and leads,” says Oudin.
In the beauty industry, satisfaction levels for measuring ROI sit at 85%, with 8% stating they’re dissatisfied with their ability of measurement, significantly lower than top-performing industries like tech and digital (92%), financial services (91%), retail (93%), and fashion (91%).
“Whilst experiential marketing is actually very measurable, it is not as clear cut as digital where engagement is very black and white,” adds Peake, who goes on to explain key ROI metrics that should be considered for experiential marketing. “Experiential delivers a breadth of ROI metrics across quantitative (e.g., samples delivered) and qualitative (e.g., brand perception shift, and earned media value), the latter requiring post-event analysis to measure.”
Gradient highlights the top success metrics for ROI from the brands satisfied with their measurements as: earned media value (64%), social engagement (41%), foot traffic for physical events (46%), trial and sampling quantities (41%), and CRM data capture ($38%). These figures indicate a balanced approach to both direct consumer interaction and long-term relationship building, with less emphasis placed on trackable sales compared to other metrics.
An example of successful ROI measurement for experiential marketing was Maybelline’s in-person Summer Carnival of Beauty event. Post-event, the brand's measurements found that over 3,000 attendees were welcomed, with over 19K samples distributed, which generated a 30% increase in share of voice. Another notable example is Gisou’s NYC Honey-Infused Hair Oil pop-up from 2023, which generated record-breaking foot traffic from the brand while bringing in $21 million in earned media value, a 127% increase from its installation the previous year. During the activation, Gisou noted that its TikTok and Instagram following grew by over 300,000 followers.
Key takeaway: For beauty businesses, budget constraints and the challenge of proving ROI remain significant hurdles in experiential marketing. Successful experiential campaigns require a balance of measurable metrics like sampling and foot traffic alongside qualitative outcomes like brand perception shifts, with less of a focus on sales metrics.
Omnichannel Optimization
Once brands have their consumer connection strategy and KPIs locked in, the next point of focus is integrating the experiential campaign across different marketing channels. As reported by Gradient, 64% of beauty and skincare brands show strong integration when it comes to digital campaigns combining influencer marketing with brand content creation. However, OOH advertising and experiential campaigns are significantly less integrated compared to other industries. “Brands now operate in a fully omnichannel world, yet experiential marketing has traditionally been siloed from digital channels,” says Peake.
By failing to integrate OOH experiential marketing across brand channels, brands are missing opportunities to further their reach to a wider audience. “The sooner experiential marketing can be integrated into a beauty brand’s experiential strategy, the bigger the payoff across its channels,” adds Oudin.
Oudin advises that a foolproof start to integrate OOH campaigns with digital channels is encouraging visitors and consumers to share content to socials, upping UGC (user-generated content). “Experiences prompt more UGC because audiences want to livethe story of the product—not just buy it.”
For brands looking to dissect a strategy, influencer integration works just as well (if not better) for in-person experiential marketing as it does for digital-only campaigns. An example can be made of prebiotic soda brand Poppi, which leveraged a blend of influencer-driven buzz and community focus to create a viral cultural moment with its “Poppi World” pop-up in NYC. Anchored by an exclusive preview party during New York Fashion Week, attended by over 350 influencers and celebrities including 50 Cent, the event generated over 65 million social media impressions before the doors even opened to the public.
“At the end of the day, we live on social media—everyone does—and nowadays, you kind of can’t get away with just doing an in-real-life event,” says Allison Ellsworth, co-founder and Chief Brand Officer at Poppi. “Social media kind of feels like a reality show now. Everyone knows what’s going on and they want to be a part of it,” she explains. “The reason we do the influencer event the night before is because then it starts to go viral online. It’s on everyone’s For You page. Everyone’s like, ‘Oh my goodness. What is this that all these creators are talking about? I have to go see it for myself.’”
The activation drew 2,500 eager visitors to the storefront, showcasing the new Cherry Cola flavor and exclusive merchandise. Poppi’s strategic use of social media, street marketing, and celebrity engagement exemplifies how combining real-life events with online virality can maximize brand impact and community connection.
“The convergence of physical and digital touchpoints is creating a more fluid, interconnected brand experience, allowing for real-time consumer engagement and driving greater awareness, participation, and ultimately ROI,” adds Peake. “It’s an exciting development that’s helping brands create more dynamic, integrated experiences across both the digital and physical world.
Key takeaway: Integrating experiential marketing into omnichannel strategy—combining physical activations with digital platforms like influencer campaigns and user-generated content—can significantly amplify reach, consumer engagement, and ROI.
Future Fundamentals
Experiential marketing has become a transformative force in the industry—one that almost everyone wants to be involved in. As consumer expectations evolve, authenticity, emotional resonance, and bold creativity are paramount for success. Brands looking to correctly execute experiential marketing should prioritize meaningful experiences over fleeting trends and direct sales, fostering long-term engagement and brand loyalty. Additionally, by integrating experiential marketing into a broader omnichannel strategy—through influencer-driven buzz, user-generated content, and immersive experiences—brands can amplify their impact, seamlessly bridging physical and digital interactions. By focusing on moments, stories, and experiences that captivate and inspire, brands can secure their place as leaders in the experiential era. As said by Oudin, “The desire for these human connections over product consumption is here to stay—and brands must shift to experiential to keep up with this demand.”
