Alexis Kestler
Hey there! Field marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect with potential customers and drive sales. But what exactly is it, and how can you get it right?
As an expert in marketing analytics and technology, I‘ll walk you through everything you need to know to develop a rock-solid field marketing strategy.
See, field marketing is all about creating real, tangible brand experiences through in-person events and interactions. And it offers some powerful advantages that digital marketing simply can‘t provide.
Let‘s dive in!
What Makes Field Marketing So Impactful?
In today‘s digital-first world, it‘s easy to focus all your marketing efforts online. But the brands seeing the most success combine online and offline strategies for an omnichannel approach.
Here are three big reasons field marketing delivers results:
1. PersonalConnections
Nothing builds rapport and trust like face-to-face interactions. Field marketing creates bonds between your brand and consumers through conversations and experiences.
According to a study by EventTrack, 79% of participants said in-person events like trade shows strengthen relationships.
2. Tangible Brand Experiences
Digital channels only allow you to talk about your brand. Field marketing lets consumers directly experience your brand through sight, sound, touch, and more.
Per Freeman, Brand experiences are memorable to over 75% of participants. They‘re more likely to remember and engage with your brand than digital ads or content.
3. Data Direct From the Source
The customer insights you gain from in-person surveys, feedback sessions, conversations, and demos offer unmatched value.
Field marketing provides the human element that big data alone lacks. You can connect with consumers on a real emotional level to learn their needs and preferences.
So in a nutshell, field marketing accelerates sales by forging meaningful consumer connections grounded in tangible experiences.
Now let‘s explore exactly how to make field marketing work for your brand.
What Is Field Marketing?
Field marketing refers to any form of live, in-person brand activation that occurs in your target market. The "field" is wherever your customers are.
The goal is to increase awareness, engagement, leads, and sales through real-world experiences. Common field marketing activities include:
- Product demonstrations – Showcasing products at retail, events, or street activations
- Brand ambassadors – Engaging consumers at events and in public settings
- Custom events – Planning specialized experiences like pop-ups, festivals, contests and trade shows
- Retail merchandising – Branded displays and promos at retail partner locations
- Sampling – Handing out free product samples
- Sponsorships – Tying your brand to events through naming rights or on-site presence
You can also break field marketing down into two main types:
Brand marketing focuses on general awareness, engagement and lead gen through experiential events.
Sales/retail marketing concentrates on driving specific conversions through demos, meetings with partners, and retail merchandising.
The unifying idea is using in-person experiences to influence the consumer journey across the awareness, consideration, and purchase stages.
Now let‘s look at the people who make it all happen.
Who Handles Field Marketing?
Dedicated field marketers are responsible for bringing marketing strategies to life "in the field." Their responsibilities typically include:
- Developing creative brand experiences that align with campaign goals
- Managing all event logistics like venues, staffing, supplies, and travel
- Creating eye-catching merchandising items and branded environments
- Building relationships with retail partners to distribute branded assets
- Recruiting and training brand ambassadors to represent your company
- Tracking campaign metrics like leads captured, sales influenced, and event feedback
- Managing program budgets and timelines
- Continuously optimizing efforts based on results
The best field marketers blend strategic thinking with smooth on-site execution across complex, fast-paced programs.
They also collaborate seamlessly with internal teams like brand managers, product marketers, sales reps, designers, and more to make the consumer journey cohesive.
Now let‘s explore some go-to strategies to connect with customers.
Top 8 Field Marketing Activities to Consider
Experiential events offer endless options for showcasing your brand. Here are eight field marketing activities I recommend exploring:
1. Pop-up Shops
Temporary physical storefronts selling products directly to consumers. They build hype and provide valuable consumer insights.
For example, Target operates pop-up shops showcasing new private label brands. Consumers can browse products in person before they reach stores.
2. Street Teams
Brand ambassadors engaging consumers in public spaces through activities like giveaways, games, and product demos.
Red Bull famously uses street teams to distribute free samples and showcase daring stunts aligning with their edgy brand image.
3. Retail Merchandising
Branded displays and promotions at retail partner locations.
Coca-Cola invests heavily in retail merchandising from branded coolers to custom holiday displays. This drives product visibility and sales for retailers.
4. Trade Show Booths
Exhibiting at industry conferences and exposing your brand to large target audiences.
At major tech trade shows like CES, brands stand out through creative booth environments. Companies spend up to $100K on their spaces.
5. Experiential Marketing
Immersive, interactive brand experiences through stunts, virtual reality, simulations and more.
In 2014 Volvo created an experiential stunt where consumers could test auto braking features in a driving simulator. This conveyed safety benefits memorably.
6. Product Sampling
Distributing free samples of new products to drive awareness and trial.
Costco is famous for its generous free food samples – a cheap way to introduce new items to members.
7. Sponsorships
Partnering with events through financial or in-kind support in exchange for brand exposure.
Red Bull cultivates its daring image by sponsoring extreme sports like cliff diving and Flugtag flying competitions.
8. Brand Ambassadors
Employing captivating reps to engage visitors at events and relate your brand‘s story.
Disney and Coca-Cola excel at hiring smiling, enthusiastic brand ambassadors to bring their brands to life. Their reps reflect corporate values and convey consistent messaging.
Get creative in selecting strategies tailored to your goals, brand personality, target audience and budget. Combining multiple elements creates an integrated campaign with greater impact.
Now let‘s look at taking your efforts up a notch through unforgettable events.
7 Innovative Field Event Ideas
Memorable events attract attention while conveying what your brand stands for. Take inspiration from these creative event concepts:
1. Mobile Tours
Hit the road to bring your brand to customers across multiple cities. Set up product demos or experiences at each stop.
Red Bull converted an entire semi truck into a mobile gaming lounge. Gamers could play racing simulators inside the trailer at various events.
2. Stunts
Pull off a public stunt that grabs attention while conveying your brand creatively.
To introduce the Tacoma pickup, Toyota staged a stunt where pro BMX bikers leaped the truck through explosions of paper. This dramatized durability and performance.
3. Competitions
Host a public contest or challenge to showcase your brand through an engaging activity.
GoPro‘s Million Dollar Challenge filmed users competing in a massive obstacle course for a $1 million prize. This highlighted GoPro‘s ability to capture daring feats.
4. Takeovers
Temporarily transform a public space into an interactive, branded environment.
To promote Captain Morgan rum, the brand took over a New York City subway car with a tropical pirate theme.
5. Pop-Up Restaurant
Set up a temporary branded eatery offering free food samples or meals.
Sweetgreen opened a popup restaurant with Instagrammable neon signs and free salads. This created buzz for their opening while conveying healthy ingredients.
6. Cultural Event Integration
Tie your brand to a high-profile cultural event through sponsorships or branded extensions.
As part of Toronto Pride, Skittles created an immersive popup store with rainbow designs and limited-edition white Skittles representing LGBTQ inclusiveness.
7. Giveaways
Offer free branded products to generate excitement and word-of-mouth exposure.
During SXSW, Uber gave away free bike helmets promoting their JUMP bikes. People were thrilled to score a freebie.
Dream big! Find creative ways to inject your brand into cultural conversations.
Now let‘s move on to making the most of your events and campaigns…
How to Maximize Your Field Marketing Results
Field marketing takes considerable investment. Follow these tips to get the most bang for your buck:
Set Specific Goals
Define exactly what you want to achieve upfront so you can focus efforts and measure ROI. Keep goals S.M.A.R.T. – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Align Messaging
Ensure all experiences reinforce core brand messaging consistently. Confusing messages dilute impact.
Promote in Advance
Build anticipation through email, social media, PR and ads. Offer special perks for early registrations or activations.
Measure Behavior
Observe how consumers interact with experiences and note pain points. This reveals opportunities to refine design and flow.
Capture Contacts
Collect lead details through contests, surveys and demos for follow-up nurturing.
Close the Loop
Continue engaging participants through post-event email, social and even direct mail. Send surveys to capture feedback.
Repurpose Content
Recut video footage, photos, testimonials and other assets from events into online promos.
Report ROI
Compare quantifiable metrics like leads generated and sales directly influenced to costs.
Keep Iterating
Tweak elements and improve future events based on data and feedback.
With strategic execution, field marketing drives significant impact. In fact, according to Freeman, brand experiences deliver a 4-10x higher ROI than other marketing channels.
Now let‘s look at results in more detail…
Quantifying the Value of Field Marketing
Many marketers struggle to measure field efforts accurately. But capturing this data is critical for optimizing spend.
Start by tracking metrics like:
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| Metric | Method |
|---|---|
| Brand awareness lift | Pre and post-event surveys |
| Leads captured | Registration forms, lead retrieval tools |
| Sales influenced | Codes, tracking links |
| Social impressions | Hashtags, social listening |
| Press mentions | Google Alerts for brand name |
| Ad equivalency value | Compare impressions to ad costs |
| Net Promoter Score | Post-event NPS surveys |
Crunching this data reveals areas to refine. You might spot low awareness lift indicating poor messaging. Low lead capture could mean ineffective calls-to-action.
Tracking sales influence is also key. For example, a 10% sales bump in a market after an event can give you an ROI target for future efforts.
Beyond hard metrics, also track sentiment through surveys, social listening, and field staff observations. Uncover what participants like most and least.
Pulling all this data together paints a clear picture of field marketing effectiveness.
Now let‘s move on to making the most of your ambassador teams.
Creating a Standout Ambassador Program
Your field marketing is only as strong as the team representing your brand on the front lines. Follow these tips for building an elite brand ambassador squad:
Set Clear Responsibilities
Determine specific roles like product demonstrations, hospitality, activation setup/cleanup, and more.
Look Internally First
Employees make authentic ambassadors. Consider part-time brand rep roles for enthusiastic staffers.
Cast a Wide External Net
Recruit brand fans, campus reps, influencers and anyone who embodies your brand‘s spirit.
Screen for Skills
Assess communication skills, presentation comfort, problem solving and brand knowledge through auditions.
Train Comprehensively
Educate reps on brand history, values, products, talking points, common FAQs and responsiveness protocols.
Provide Brand Guidelines
Issue style guides covering approved messaging, dress code, etiquette, social media and general conduct.
Foster Team Culture
Facilitate team bonding and idea sharing through pre-event meetups and online groups.
Set Incentives
Offer perks like free products, brand swag, and contest prizes for top performance.
Solicit Feedback
Debrief with teams after events to improve programs based on their insights.
With the right culture and training, your squad will connect with consumers in memorable ways. Their impact can be massive – the +80k Butterfinger scouts at SXSW 2018 accumulated 168M online impressions!
Okay, we‘ve covered a ton so far. Let‘s recap the key takeaways before diving into optimizing efforts.
Field Marketing 101: Core Principles to Remember
We just covered a lot of ground! Here are the core principles to keep top of mind:
- Think beyond digital – combine online and offline strategies for full impact.
- Connect physically – foster real bonds through face-to-face engagements.
- Stand out – cut through the noise with creative, memorable experiences.
- Obsess over data – relentlessly track quantifiable metrics and customer sentiment.
- Iterate constantly – optimize future initiatives based on past performance data.
- Provide value – avoid overly salesy gimmicks – give people meaningful, rewarding brand interactions.
Now let‘s dive into the all-important optimization process.
Continuously Optimizing Your Field Marketing
Don‘t view field events and campaigns as one-offs. The biggest mistake is failing to apply learnings.
Follow this process to keep improving:
1. Establish Benchmarks
Quantify baseline metrics like impressions, reach, awareness lift and sales influence per program based on historical data.
2. Set Goals
Define specific targets you want to achieve with each initiative. What level of awareness lift, leads and sales do you expect given investment?
3. Measure Results
Capture quantitative and qualitative data throughout each program. Monitor social listening and press hits in real time.
4. Compare to Goals
Did you meet, exceed or fall short of the KPIs you defined? Identify areas of over and underperformance.
5. Course Correct
Keep what worked, eliminate what didn‘t and test new approaches. This evolution ensures you maximize ROI of future events.
6. Factor in Market Changes
Account for external factors like economic conditions, competitor moves, consumer trends and seasonality that may impact performance.
It‘s all about relentless incremental improvement. With rigorous optimization, your best field marketing is yet to come!
Now let‘s wrap up with the key takeaways you can apply to your own efforts…
Putting It All Together: Core Principles for Field Marketing Mastery
We‘ve just covered everything you need for winning field marketing. Here are the key principles toremember:
- Combine digital + field strategies for integrated impact across touchpoints.
- Get face-to-face to form meaningful consumer connections and gain insights.
- Design memorable experiences that convey what your brand stands for.
- Build an A+ ambassador program to represent your brand authentically.
- Collect precise data on awareness lift, leads generated, sales influenced and sentiment.
- Optimize obsessively by learning from each event to maximize your next effort.
The brands winning today engage consumers through online channels, in-store experiences, buzzworthy events and more.
Field marketing brings digital campaigns to life through tangible, in-person moments that resonate deeply.
So get out there and connect with customers! With creative, insight-driven field marketing initiatives, you can build lasting brand love and sales impact.
Reach out anytime if you need help bringing your field marketing vision to life! I‘m always happy to collaborate.
