Marketing only matters when it creates traction. Whether your goal is to build brand loyalty or drive a surge in sales, the path to results is the same: focus. Instead of spreading your limited time and budget across countless tactics, choose the single approach most likely to create the outcome you’re looking for. Then execute it fully. That’s the strategy behind high-impact marketing.
When it comes to high-impact marketing strategies, success isn’t about how much you do. It’s about whether what you do actually triggers the behavior you’re aiming for—whether that’s deeper engagement or purchases made today.
This guide covers seven high-impact marketing strategies with the potential to fast-track specific types of business growth. However, you’ll want to choose one and focus on one at a time to increase your chances of success.
7 high-impact marketing strategies
- Buzz marketing
- Experiential marketing
- Interactive marketing
- Gamification
- Augmented reality (AR) marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Co-marketing or co-branding
High-impact marketing can help you increase sales, attract new customers, and boost customer loyalty. Here are seven high-impact marketing strategies, featuring real-world examples to inspire your next campaign:
1. Buzz marketing
Goal: boost brand awareness
Tactics: controversial content, suspenseful pre-launch marketing, surprising thought leadership
Buzz marketing focuses on encouraging word-of-mouth referrals through controversial, novel, outrageous, intriguing, or funny content. Done well, it can boost brand awareness and increase demand because people start talking about your brand organically.
Buzz marketing campaigns are designed to provoke a response. Some withhold information to build suspense. One example of this strategy is dropping hints about forthcoming product launches, capitalizing on consumers’ desire to be in on a secret, and encouraging speculation among loyal customers.
Buzz marketing campaigns can also be intentionally polarizing. Nike’s Emmy-winning 2018 ad spot, “Dream Crazy,” folded the brand into the controversy surrounding civil rights activist and former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who knelt in protest during the playing of the national anthem. The ad itself inspired shoe-burning protests and preceded a decline in the brand’s approval rating, but it also earned record engagement and led to a surge in the brand’s stock value.
2. Experiential marketing
Goal: boost engagement and user-generated content
Tactics: pop-up shops, in-person or virtual events, scavenger hunts
Experiential marketing involves creating memorable, immersive experiences for customers, either online or in the real world. Examples include pop-up shops, virtual reality experiences, brand activations, and live events. This type of marketing allows a brand’s target audience to enjoy firsthand the value the company provides—for example, by sampling its products, interacting with its team, or test-driving the proprietary technology or system that sets it apart. This has the power to boost conversions and build a community around the brand.
Minimalist makeup company Glossier has a history of effectively harnessing experiential marketing strategies. The company designed a shoppable billboard scavenger hunt for the launch of its Boy Brow Arch brow pencil and invested in a design it described as “adult Disneyland” for its NYC flagship. Glossier has also relied on pop-up shops since its 2014 founding, creating more opportunities for audiences to engage with the brand and contributing to pop-up conversion rates as high as 60%.
Heyday Canning is also famously known for its viral “Bean Swap” event, in which participants could donate a can of beans in exchange for a can of Heyday beans. These kinds of activations make for great user-generated content engines.
3. Interactive marketing
Goal: build anticipation and customer relationships
Tactics: polls, surveys, livestreams, contests or giveaways, and live shopping events
Interactive marketing is a personalized strategy focused on fostering dialogue and building customer relationships, especially online. Examples of interactive marketing tactics include polls or surveys, livestreams, contests or giveaways, and live shopping events. Interactive marketing campaigns pair well with lead generation efforts because they prime customers to take action. You can capitalize on this engagement by gathering key contact information and use it to nurture leads by serving them with additional relevant offers or recommendations.
For Black Friday, luggage retailer Beis introduced a novel interactive experience. The brand hosted a doorbuster sale that digitally re-created the anticipation and scarcity mindset of in-person Black Friday shopping by inviting shoppers to join a virtual waiting room. Ultimately, 60,000 shoppers participated.
4. Gamification
Goal: increase customer engagement, sales, and loyalty
Tactics: win-a-discount games, quizzes, competitions, and challenges
Ecommerce gamification involves creating game-like experiences to increase customer engagement and boost loyalty. Common types include win-a-discount games, quizzes, and competitions or challenges.
Gamification is also the root of many customer loyalty programs. Businesses award customers points or perks in exchange for actions that provide value to the company—like making purchases, posting about products on social platforms, or supplying customer information. By using game-like interfaces that chart progress toward earning one of these perks, brands can motivate ongoing engagement and collect data they can use to optimize future marketing efforts.
Consider KFC Japan, for example. The company memorably launched the shrimp dish Ebi Puri in 2020 with the online game Shrimp Attack. The game awarded customers with vouchers for successfully defending a cartoon KFC restaurant from an onslaught of oversized airborne shrimp. The game generated a 91% engagement rate and increased sales by 106% over the previous year.
5. Augmented reality (AR) marketing
Goal: boost sales and reduce returns
Tactics: virtual fitting rooms and try-on apps
AR marketing involves using AR technology to layer digital elements over the physical world, creating opportunities for unique and immersive user interactions.
Examples include virtual fitting rooms like Warby Parker’s eyeglasses try-on app. Home décor sales tools like Ikea Kreativ let a user “see” what a piece of furniture might look like in a room prior to purchase. Virtual fitting rooms can increase engagement, reduce the barrier to purchase, and support better purchasing decisions. This can help you boost customer satisfaction, make more sales, and reduce return rates.
In 2019, Gucci enabled users to virtually demo its Ace sneaker line. Customers could view shoes from different angles, and the app included a built-in photo-capture tool that encouraged them to share their images on social media platforms. The AR campaign helped Gucci generate a 300% increase in online sales.
6. Influencer marketing
Goal: reach niche audiences and boost SEO
Tactics: creator partnerships, sponsored reviews, influencer unboxings
Influencer marketing involves paying a creator who’s popular with your target audience to promote or review products. They may post content about your brand to social media platforms or serve as a brand ambassador.
It’s an effective way to reach niche audiences and can support your business’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. By encouraging authoritative sources to create positive content about your business, you may elevate your website’s domain authority. The higher your domain authority score (on a scale from 0 to 100), the more likely your website is to achieve higher search engine rankings compared to a competitor with similar content.
Skin care company Jaxon Lane effectively harnessed the power of micro-influencer partnerships to earn Wall Street Journal coverage in the same year the company was founded. It has since used the strategy to land retail partnerships with Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue.
7. Co-marketing or co-branding
Goal: boost sales and maximize reach
Tactics: product collaborations, ad campaign partnerships
Co-marketing involves teaming up with another company for mutual promotion. Co-branding creates a new product that shows the influence of both brand identities and is marketed under both brand names. For example, tinned fish company Fishwife and CPG retailer Fly By Jing teamed up to launch their bestselling co-branded smoked salmon with chili crisp in 2021.
In addition to expanding each company’s product development capabilities, these strategies allow brands to invest their collective resources in creating high-impact marketing campaigns. They can access the capacity of two marketing teams, share information like target audience research and industry insights, and benefit from direct contact with their partner’s customer base.
High-impact marketing FAQ
What does high-impact mean in advertising?
High-impact advertising typically refers to digital advertising strategies and experiential tactics that effectively share a brand’s message. High-impact strategies are focused on narrow goals and short-term results. High-impact ads are often visually distinct and use creative ideas to encourage user interaction, such as making intriguing, shoppable content or inviting audiences to play a game and provide feedback.
How do you measure an ad’s impact?
Businesses use Google Analytics to track key performance indicators (KPIs) like click-through rate (CTR), engagement rate, and conversion rate.
What makes an ad impactful?
High-impact ads reach the right audiences and encourage them to take action. They’re also cost-effective and appropriate to your business goals.
