How To Choose An Experiential Staffing Agency

As the event staff industry prepares to face new challenges for 2024, experiential marketing continues to emerge as one of the most effective marketing campaign strategies for today’s influential brands and service-providing companies. In our coexisting age of millennials and the hyper-connected brands ready to serve their wants and needs, the power of experiential marketing has never been more vital to marketing strategy. Brands have new challenges to contend with when considering face-to-face marketing options; including event execution, face-to-face customer experience, and brand engagement. The importance of hiring the best event staffing agency for your brand activation comes into play. Ultimately, your choice of brand ambassadors, product demonstrators, street teams, and event support staff act as the ‘face’ of your brand, so it’s crucial to choose a reliable brand activation agency with an experienced field team for maximum results. We take extra steps to elevate the skills of our field staff to ensure successful events with expert brand ambassadors.

There are many engagement marketing strategies your company can explore as part of creating an experiential marketing campaign. From guerrilla marketing street teams offering free samples to pop-up events designed to capture public attention to mobile marketing tours that reach target consumers nationwide. We live in an age where customer engagement is the foundation of a brand’s success. How your event activation team performs in the field can be the difference between gaining positive traction with lasting customer retention or fading into the sidelines.

5 Tips On Selecting An Experiential Staffing Agency

We’ll look at how to choose the right experiential staffing agency. At Encore Nationwide, we’ve compiled some of the key factors your brand/agency might consider before planning its next activation. Whether this is your first foray into experiential staffing or you are looking to level up the event attendee experience, these five tips will eliminate the guesswork and help you select the right staffing agency partner to fit your objectives. Let’s get down to business…

1) How To Choose An Experiential Event Staffing Agency?

When it comes to securing an event staffing agency with top field talent, always look for a staffing agency that understands your goals and aligns with your brands’ core values. Strong partnerships are built on the guarantee of successful activations and ensuring maximize efficiencies in planning. However, before you sign with a marketing activation agency, it’s perfectly acceptable to trial a selection of staffing agencies before committing to ‘the one’. This may cost a bit extra in the beginning to trial a few experiential staffing agencies, but the savings of time, money, and stress will be priceless. Conducting a little extra field testing first will help you decide which agency is a good fit for your brand’s overall strategy. This trial run will also drive confidence in your decision from your marketing team.

2) Always Invest Time In Agency Background Checks

Word-of-mouth feedback speaks volumes and is one of the most trusted forms of feedback in the marketing industry. Testimonials from previous clients are a reliable way to identify whether or not your chosen agency has that quality ‘seal of approval.’ After all, the end game is to find a staffing agency partner that responds well under pressure, can deliver as promised, and will serve as a seamless extension of your team. So it pays to cautiously investigate and analyze to find an agency that shares your core principles and mirrors your brand’s values. Ask yourself, does the staffing agency have a rating system that extracts the premium caliber of candidates, and can filter their search by characteristics that meet program needs? Encore Nationwide has these capabilities and was the first to put these staffing strategies in place when hiring marketing field staff. Ultimately, you’ll want your staffing partner to be as specific as possible with their selection and hiring process. Hiring the right event staff drives an authentic connection with your target audience.

3) Require An Experiential Event Staffing Partner Vs. A General Staffing Agency

You’ll want to work with a team that knows what it takes to make a brand activation successful. Not all staffing is similar and each type of event requires a unique brand representative skillset. Favor resources with a strong background in experiential versus generic event staffing. Product specialists, brand ambassadors, guerrilla marketing teams, product samplers, and tour field staff all have unique talents that are required to execute their roles successfully.

According to award-winning journalist Malcolm Gladwell, “Buyers make most decisions by relying on their two-second first impressions based on stored memories, images, and feelings.” If brands have just 2 seconds to capture the customer’s attention before that person decides whether or not to make a purchase, all the more reason to choose an agency that specializes in experiential event staffing.

Encore Nationwide invests in customer-focused staff who have been fully vetted and verified. We ensure brand reps are 100% aligned with your core values and image. Our field staff has a powerful influence over how your brand is perceived during and after your brand activation.

4) Trust In The Best In Class Brand Staffing & Activation Results

The single most successful trait that today’s brands have in common is Trust! Trust is created in every aspect of the experiential marketing campaign. When researching your event staffing agency options, it pays to be wary of anonymous review sites. We all love to read five-star reviews, but it’s crucial to check whether or not these reviews are legitimate before deciding to partner up. Remember to only trust genuine reviews from verified users. Encore Nationwide has been in business since 1998 because we provide quality staff, excellent communication, and ROI for our clients. Unfortunately, some field staff does not live up to our high standards and we are attacked online for that reason. We do our best to grow and elevate our talent, but protecting our clients’ brands comes first.

5) Consider How Your Chosen Agency Handles Problematic Situations

Our Goal: To make your brand’s image flawless in the hearts and minds of your customers. When you are editing the list of possible staffing agency partners, be sure to ask questions about the processes they have in place to maximize staff performance. Also, how do they leverage their contingency plans when the unexpected happens? At Encore Nationwide, we handle every aspect of event staffing with professionalism. And because real-time live events can be unpredictable at the best of times, our support and logistical experts will work alongside you, offering practical solutions to any challenges that may arise before or during the event day.

Encore Nationwide: A Top Choice for Staffing Solutions

As we enter 2022, you might be wondering how your brand can generate a scalable measure of success from a marketing calendar filled with exciting events? When it comes to generating buzz from a series of ideas and memorable experiences, it’s safe to say that marketers are looking at face to face as the most effective channel to deliver brand engagement. Whether your event is focused on the general public or targets just a small group of private clients, choose an experiential staffing agency that demonstrates a premium level of knowledge and expertise. Our sole focus is on hiring the right team of professionals – event after event.