When it comes to marketing, most brands think of digital marketing — marketing efforts that are done online.
While digital marketing does indeed reign superior, there are many other aspects of a powerful marketing campaign.
For instance, the power of face-to-face marketing can never be overstated. Unfortunately, it is underestimated and tends to be forgotten thanks to the digitally driven world we all live in.
Field marketing is designed in a way that combines some of the most effective sales and marketing efforts to be used front and center with customers and prospects out in the physical world.
As a result, more authentic relationships are built.
Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.
What is Field Marketing?
Field marketing consists of numerous activities that are carried out by marketers in the field or on-site.
They are specifically trained in what they do — building a brand. These activities help to promote lead generation efforts and customer relationship management.
Some examples of field marketing activities include product demonstrations, direct sales promotions, roadshows, webinars, and events.
These activities are all measurable, which is one reason they’re so effective.
The goal of field marketing is to inform, influence, educate, and persuade consumers to make a purchase.
What are the Benefits of Field Marketing?
As mentioned, field marketers are trained in meeting and exceeding the needs of a target audience while also being 100 percent familiar with a brand’s values, mission, and inner workings.
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of field marketing.
Improves Brand Perception
Brand perception is the way that consumers see your brand. It is important that this is always in a positive light.
At the same time, you must ensure your target audience is actually seeing your brand.
After all, consumers see over 1,700 banners ads each month, but they only notice around half of them. In order to make your brand memorable, you must be willing to step outside of the advertising box.
Getting out into the field — where your potential customers are — can help improve overall brand perception.
With field marketing, you can get your brand directly in front of your target audience and interact with them.
This enhances the user experience and makes the whole thing far more memorable since they’re able to experience your brand face-to-face.
Field marketing also opens up the opportunity to instill the ideas and values of the brand into consumers’ minds, increasing the chance to convert consumers into customers and customers into loyal ones.
Handles Customers
It isn’t uncommon for customers to be skeptical about doing business with a new brand or a brand that they’re unfamiliar with.
One way to combat this is through field marketing.
With people out in the field, your brand has the chance to answer any hard or harsh questions that consumers may have regarding your company.
Field marketers are able to answer questions, demonstrate products, and more in real-time, directly in front of the customer.
With the right field marketing team, this particular tactic can turn skeptical customers into loyal ones.
Enhances Customer Relationships
Trust is key when it comes to the success of your brand. Without trust, you essentially don’t have loyal customers to rely on. As a result, your business suffers considerably.
Although customers expect companies to know everything there is to know about them and what they want, this is virtually impossible.
Field marketing helps to improve customer relationships by being front and center with customers and providing answers to their questions and concerns.
This helps to increase their trust in your brand.
Provides Measurable ROI
When field marketing campaigns are successful, you can expect to obtain quantifiable results.
You can get real-time data with good reporting software that can be used on a laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc.
Through this software, field marketers can input the data they obtain from being out in the field face-to-face with consumers, and then brand owners and product managers can view this data in real-time.
More often than not, the field marketing activities performed (think webinars and product demonstrations) will require some basic information from consumers.
This list of consumer information can then be used in the CRM so you can determine which field marketing activity is tied to sales.
Accurate Targeting
As mentioned, field marketing is a face-to-face activity. Some examples include product demonstrations, samples, sales promotions, conferences, events, and onboarding.
By getting in the middle of everything, field marketers are presented with the unique opportunity to learn more about why consumers like or don’t like certain products.
When information from the field is combined with quantitative data, you will be better able to target your audience while making informed marketing and business decisions.
How to Plan Successful Field Marketing Campaigns
There are numerous steps you should take to plan a successful field marketing campaign. Here are a few things to get you started.
1. Set Goals
For some, setting goals for your field marketing campaign may be obvious. For others, not so much.
Regardless, this step is one that is very important and should be taken seriously. Without sufficient planning and goal setting, your entire marketing team won’t be properly connected.
Your goals should be SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-Driven, and Time-Sensitive.
Some questions to ask as you set your goals include:
- Who is your target audience?
- Is your audience familiar with your brand currently?
- What steps can you take to increase conversion rates?
- What is your goal for conversion?
2. Promote Face-to-face Customer Meetings
It is always encouraged to meet with your customers face-to-face whenever possible.
Therefore, your field marketers should be working toward setting up these in-person appointments. This will take some coordination between departments — field, customer support, and sales.
By promoting face-to-face meetings with customers, you will be better able to develop a personal relationship that shows how much you are willing to invest in their loyalty to your brand.
If you are trying to remain virtual for the time being, consider offering one-on-one chat rooms to your guests.
This creates the perfect chance for guests to get to know you, exhibitors, and speakers better.
3. Make Roadshows
Roadshows make for the perfect time to promote your brand and improve lead generation.
Field marketers can host a brand booth with marketing collateral, props, etc. to attract and educate prospects about your brand and what you have to offer.
Since customer feedback is always beneficial to the growth and success of your brand, passersby who are interested can stop at the booth, sample your product, and offer feedback immediately.
So you can plan accordingly, make sure you are aware of the timeframe of the show. Roadshows tend to last a few hours to the whole day.
4. Make Webinars
Webinars help ensure that you are reaching your target audience and an audience of consumers who have a strong intent to purchase.
Webinars can have a relatively similar feeling to an in-person event. In webinars, field marketers can demonstrate how a particular product works.
You can invite some experts to attend the webinar and share their professional opinion. You can even bring in some loyal customers to help spread the word.
You can explain hard-to-understand features of your product, which can ensure that customers are familiar with how to properly use the product so they can get the best use out of it.
5. Host Virtual Events for Your Audience
Since COVID-19, more and more people feel safer within the walls of their home.
Although things have gotten better and in-person events are starting up again, COVID-19 is still a concern for some, and they want to take the necessary measures to stay safe.
With that being said, virtual events have grown in popularity as a result of this pandemic. Generally, conferences can have hundreds or thousands of guests, but when you opt to go virtual, you have the chance to reach even more people in a single setting.
Some examples of virtual events you can host include workshops, webinars, training programs, lunch and learns, and full conferences.
One thing to consider is to utilize smaller-scale events like workshops as a lead-in to larger-scale events like conferences.
6. Create Customized Content Experiences
Your target audience is likely comprised of consumers from different demographics. Because of this, a one-size-fits-all marketing approach simply will not cut it.
You need to create personalized content that will speak to each of them.
No, this doesn’t mean literally each and every person. Instead, it means you should create content that aligns with each demographic/segment that you’re targeting in your marketing campaign.
There should also be content that focuses on each stage of the buying journey.
For instance, you may create a 200-word post to put on Facebook, along with a link to a blog post.
However, this same tactic cannot be used on Twitter. Instead, you should create a short tweet that summarizes the blog with a shortened URL to the post.
7. Increase Your Reach Through Partner Marketing
When you would like to reach a larger audience and scale your overall marketing efforts, partner marketing can come in handy.
This particular marketing strategy is where at least two companies are working together to improve the value offered to their audiences.
Look for companies and brands that are in a niche that will complement what you are offering.
At this point, reach out and propose you become marketing partners. One idea is to host a virtual event that lets both companies connect with one another and their network.
With partner marketing, you can reduce your overall marketing costs while generally improving the results since expenses are all split.
Wrap Up
The key to field marketing is to build a solid rapport with your customers and prospects. This can be done through any of the aforementioned means (as well as others).
Basically, you just want to ensure that you are interacting and connecting with your audience, listening to their problems and concerns, and offering potential solutions.
In order to obtain maximum results from your field marketing efforts, make sure that your strategy is aligned with other important departments like sales and product marketing.
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