How to close more deals with Field Marketing

The word field marketing makes me think of Will Smith in the movie Pursuit of happiness, who is always carrying the heavy bone density scanner and struggling with sales and personal life.

It’s a great movie, but you don’t have to struggle like him to become successful at field marketing in the day and age of Zoom Calls.

Define Field Marketing

Field Marketing is a process of distributing marketing materials by a trained professional to build the brand, conduct face to face meetings, generate leads

Create product awareness that should result in sales increase.

Does your company need Field Marketing?

Many companies use Field marketing; some of them are:

• FMCG companies
• Automobile companies
• Software companies(less in comparison with other industries)
• Electronic companies
• Pharmaceutical companies
• Furniture Companies

And many sub-segments within broader industries.

Generally, your product will dictate whether you should do field marketing or not.

Before the invention of online meetings, Field Marketing was the “Go-To” practice for Marketers worldwide.

The atmosphere created by Covid-19 and the fast acceptance of online meetings has given a new definition to Field Marketing, a new fluid identity.

By doing competition mapping, you can determine if your competitors are doing field marketing or not; if yes, then what are their methods and techniques.

If you decide not to go down the “Field Marketing” route, prospecting and booking online meetings is the best-case scenario.

Doing Field Marketing depends on the industry and also on the size of the company.

Example:

A small B2B company such as Enablix will not need a Field Marketing Manager, but a Unicorn like Slack will need a Field Marketing Manager for their marketing programs.

Here’s how a recruitment post AD of a Field Marketing Manager.

How to implement field marketing at your company

There are various methods to implement field marketing; Not all techniques can be applied for a specific product/service.

But you can pick any one of these methods to get started and opt for other ways as you progress.

Provide Product Samples

This is one of the best and oldest methods of engaging prospects; although it might not be practical for some products, this is a blessing for many industries.

Examples:

Food and Beverage Industry:

If you are dealing with multiple products which your customers can consume quickly, such as soft drink, chips, or chewing gum;

You can easily offer your product samples to prospects and get their instant feedback and engage with them.

Automotive Industry:

Although the car salesmen are infamous for being too pushy and manipulating, car salesmen do so because they want you to feel the car and get emotionally attached.

Car salesmen want you to get connected with the car personally before you leave their showroom, this is the kind of hook that goes deep, and it has helped the car dealers sell hundreds and thousands of cars every year.

Car dealers leave no stone unturned when promoting the “Test drive our car today.”

You must have seen these ads on Hoarding, television, youtube, and web banners.

Car salesmen also do a home service where they come to your house and offer you to take the car for a spin; of course, they also request you to get your whole family in the car to get that hook deeper into you.

This is the kind of field salesmanship that will generate sales and create a lasting impression of the brand.

Free Software Trial:

As we are talking about product samples, we cannot ignore software trials.

This rarely happens in-person now, but this model has generated millions of dollars for software companies.

Freemium Model is the predecessor of the Free Trial model.

Anti-Virus Software (I am not a fan), Graphic designing software, Accounting software, Note-taking software, and many other software types offer free trials and freemium models.

Cosmetics:

Cosmetic companies use this to their advantage and the impulsive buying habits of their demographic.

You will find many promoters and field marketers pushing cosmetics to you at shopping malls and significant events.

This has worked very well for many cosmetic companies, and it also increases their brand goodwill and recall.

Hosting In-person events

Before Covid-19 happened, in-person events were a “thing”; events stopped happening during the peak of the “Covid-19” pandemic.

As the rules have been relaxed, businesses are still conducting in-person events with precautions.

Small and big businesses use in-person events regularly to interact with prospects/customers, offer them insights into their brand, and provide them with product updates and new product launches.

Affiliate World conference happens twice every year, the first conference is in Europe, and the second conference is in Asia.

Affiliate world conference (AWA) attracts thousands of affiliates, marketers, and digital ad vendors under one roof twice a year.

Many big brands have conducted these in-person events, and some of the popular events are Martech, Adobe Summit, Growth Marketing summit, and MozCon.

In-store promos

You must have seen these in many stores and shopping malls.

The goal is to promote new products and entice existing customers to upgrade to big-ticket products or try a new product line.

As the customer is already in your store, it becomes easy for the field marketer to grab the customer’s attention and engage them in a more casual talk about the new products.

Asking them in detail about their experience with the brand and the products and then suggesting a new product line based on their answers and the field marketer’s assessment.

Street marketing

Street marketing has a lot of potentials. You also have the freedom to try and be different and catch the attention of the passerby.

Street marketing presents excellent opportunities when you have to get a new person introduced to your brand.

Companies have used hoardings, sidewalks, zebra crossings, buildings to display innovative adverts.

Field marketers have set-up tents, kiosks, trucks, and a fancy sticker on a street marketing car.

Street marketing also gives you up close and raw feedback on what prospects think about your brand and product.

The field marketers’ feedback to the management and top marketing guys can be a gold mine.

Using this kind of raw feedback from prospects can give birth to new, innovative ad campaigns and has happened many times.

Promotional merchandise

Let’s call promotional merchandise an “ethical bribe,” shall we?

Promotional merchandise is a great way to increase brand or product awareness, although it is expensive than other methods.

Keychains, Laptop Bags, T-shirts, Shirts, Caps, Mouse Pad, USB drives, Mobile covers, Small cushions, Pens, Indoor plants are some of the most popular products that companies want to use and stamp their brand on it and offer it to their employees, prospects, and customers.

Companies of all sizes use it, although the quantity and quality of the product will differ.

Lead generation through the Online Marketing

How to develop a field marketing campaign?

Identify your target market

This is one of the main steps to take to start your field marketing campaign.

Your target market defines your marketing campaign and the following steps to follow.

Example:

If you are marketing the “Apparel Printing” business, your target market could be corporates, colleges, universities, and schools.

Corporates and colleges would be interested in getting their t-shirt, caps, and shirts printed with their logos and taglines.

A university-level fraternity house, Corporate procurement manager, or school administrator would be interesting people to get in touch with and showcase your service.

Research, your competitors

Without knowing much about your competition is like going into an F1 race with your Toyota.

You will be out of your depth and will be sickened by the loud sounds of the Mercedes/Ferrari FI engine.

There are many tools to use to find out about your competition, some of them are free.

Example:

Use Google alerts to find out about your competition.

Use your competitor’s “brand name” as an alert and set it on the “as soon as it happens” setting on Google alerts to get to know everything about your competition as soon as possible.

You can also use premium tools like Follow Chrome extension and similar web to learn more about your competition.

There are also less-popular tools that are industry-specific.

I know of an import-export consulting company that sells the data on every pharmaceutical company’s import-export figures in a specific country.

So if you are a field marketing executive of a Pharmaceutical company, this data could be a gold mine for you, and you might not need any other tool to get ahead of your competition.

So always search for industry-specific databases and services to have an edge in your industry.

Use marketing support tools

Street smarts, experience, and automation are a lethal combination to get success in any industry.

Using marketing tools and software has to be a step towards the future, aligning with the present.

Content Management System(CMS)

CMS is a tool that helps to manage content efficiently.

WordPress, Magento, and Drupal are some of the popular CMS.

Managing CMS is the job of the developers, administrators, and content managers.

However, there are many situations where a marketer will also be responsible for adding content and providing feedback.

Customer Relationship Management(CRM)

Many companies use CRM’s, and there are some great options such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Ontraport, and Pipedrive.

They offer tons of features, from email marketing to the segmentation of users based on their activities.

For many companies, this would be useful and sufficient, but just a single CRM might not be a solution for today’s unique problems.

Data Storage

Many data storage companies are vying for your attention. Some of the most popular are Google Drive, One Drive by Microsoft, and Dropbox.

These products offer the essential functions of storing the data and integrating with other platforms to ease access. Still, they do not provide specific solutions to the marketing/sales team to increase productivity levels and content adoption analytics.

Special Softwares

A tool like Enablix can also help Field marketers and other sales representatives increase their productivity and organize their content according to the client personas and different types of clients.

Creating client-specific pages, organizing content, finding the winning content, and analyzing the analytics data for the distributed content have been a boon for our clients.

You can learn more about how enablix can help with your Marketing and Sales.

OR

If you are interested, Book a personal demo to see Enablix in action.

Field Marketing vs. Marketing

Marketing is a big ol’ tree with many branches, and field marketing is a branch of marketing.

Popular branches of marketing are:

• B2B(business to business) Marketing
• B2C(business to consumer) Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Digital Marketing
• Field Marketing
• Channel Marketing

A single person cannot do marketing; that is why there is a marketing department in the companies that a marketing leader leads.

Marketing is a high-level process that a marketing leader delegates to several marketing specialists such as digital marketing specialist, branding specialist, content marketing specialist and channel marketing specialist.

Field marketing is implemented by a small team that comes under the marketing department.

Field marketing has a specific purpose, and the goals are provided to the field marketer or the team by the marketing leader.

Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing plays a significant role in the overall marketing of a product/brand.

Suppose it is not a physical product but a SAAS. In that case, there will be a digital marketing department instead of a marketing department as there will be no need for traditional marketing expertise.

Digital Marketing also has many sub-branches.

Some of them are

• Search engine Optimization
• Content marketing
• Video Marketing
• Email Marketing
• SMS marketing
• Influencer marketing

Digital marketing is also a branch of Marketing.

Examples of Smart Marketing Campaigns

Mac Fries Pedestrian crossing AD Campaign

During the most prominent public festival in Switzerland, Mcdonalds decided to get the audience’s attention by painting Fries on a pedestrian crossing.

Source: Dominique Magnusson

Ikea’s Rock Climbing vertical home AD Campaign

Ikea decided to turn a house with all its furniture vertical and make it into a wall-climbing adventure.

Source: Business Insider

Key Takeaways

• Field marketing is a team effort with lots of trials and errors; it works well when everyone in the marketing department is on the same page.
• You should use all the marketing support and automation tools at your disposal to maximize the opportunities.
• Collect customer insights, provide data to the marketing team, and listen to your customer for more success.
• Mix and match different marketing campaigns can offer you better insights into your buyer’s psyche.
• Being flexible, adaptive, and always learning will get you closer to your goals in marketing.