Field marketing, or direct marketing, is a strategy that involves promoting products or services to consumers directly. Examples of popular field marketing events include trade shows, conferences, roadshows, and conventions.
When it comes to promoting products and services, there is a big focus on connecting with consumers digitally. Animated ads, social media posts, and promotional emails reach millions of people every day. While certainly effective and convenient for brands, such broad strokes make the personal touch provided by field marketing more appreciated than ever.
Ultimately, consumers and businesses like being able to see products in person and getting their questions answered directly. They like being able to look someone in the eye and shake their hand. Enter field marketing.
In December 2024, a Meetings Industry PULSE Report from Northstar Meetings Group and Cvent found that 42% of planners feel more optimistic about meetings and events than they did six months ago. If you are among that group, you feel energized and ready to get out there to help your company and others share their goods and services with other businesses and consumers.
The in-person sharing of these products and services is exactly what field marketing does. For event planners in charge of managing field marketing events, field marketing software can help to make the process smooth and efficient. Read on to learn more about field marketing and how you can plan successful field marketing events.
What is field marketing?
Field marketing, also known as direct marketing, specifically covers the process of promoting products or services face-to-face. While most commonly done “out in the field,” field marketing also refers to live meetings, webinars, or other events that are conducted virtually but where a field marketer can still interact directly with online participants.
Field marketing is a distinct sub-category under the general marketing umbrella, and it differs from other types of marketing in its approaches and specific goals.
What is the difference between corporate marketing and field marketing?
Corporate marketing is usually about marketing a brand or company. The focus is on creating a strong and positive corporate image, satisfying customers, and getting them excited for the company’s products and services. It is also more commonly done through more traditional, expansive advertising–TV, social media, print–than through direct interactions with customers.
Field marketing can help to create the same positive regard for a brand, but that is often an indirect (albeit still intentional) side effect that comes from the direct promotion of specific products and services. This kind of marketing is focused on individual interactions and one-on-one connections rather than wide-ranging advertising.
What is the difference between product marketing and field marketing?
Product marketing is a complex process of successfully bringing products to market. Before a product even exists, a product marketing team can become involved in establishing the demand for a product and even its initial design. This team will also determine overall messaging and work with sales, customer service, and other teams for consistency.
Field marketing would be considered just one part of the larger product marketing strategy. This team oversees bringing the product or service directly to the public.
What is field marketing for B2B versus B2C?
Successful B2B field marketing helps your brand connect with other businesses, and it hopefully establishes long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships. Having all these businesses come together at the same time during a convention or other event makes arranging conversations much easier and infinitely more convenient.
Field marketing for B2C also helps to create long-lived connections, but between businesses and end consumers. For event planners, this can mean establishing annual conventions that honor particularly popular lines of products or niche entertainment with passionate built-in fan bases that are ready and willing to get more of what they love. Comics conventions and sci-fi conventions are just a couple of examples.
Whether you’re a field marketer focusing on B2B or B2C, specially conceived trade shows and conventions help you connect with businesses and other customers that come specifically for what you’re trying to promote.
What does a field marketer do?
Field marketers seek to make direct connections between their brand and potential customers and partners. That may sound straightforward on its face, but it requires much more than just showing up at a trade show or other field marketing event to be successful.
If done well, you can:
Improve brand perception
Whether representing a small brand in need of recognition or a large brand that wants to bring a more personal touch to their marketing efforts, a field marketing expert can act as the friendly, knowledgeable face of the brand at events.
Change the minds of cynical customers
Many consumers trust the input of their friends and individual social media influencers more than they do brands, which can sometimes be viewed as faceless and untouchable. Field marketers can help to build up the trust of cynical customers by answering questions and demonstrating products or services to them directly.
Help with sales efforts
Field marketers straddle marketing and sales departments by both promoting and, when needed, directly selling a brand’s products or services. In their customer outreach efforts, field marketers can also compile lists of ready contacts that the sales team can use to pursue leads after events and the initial field marketing conversations.
Build and support customer relationships
Field marketing does not necessarily end when an event does. After establishing a connection, some customers will feel most comfortable continuing their business relationship with that same person. So, a field marketer can remain the point of contact throughout, bridging the gap between a customer and the sales or customer service teams.
Provide real-time ROI numbers
When at an event, you can collect direct, real-time data about customer demographics, traffic, product or service feedback, input about other marketing initiatives, and so forth. This kind of event data can be easily collected and analyzed using field marketing software and turned into actionable information. For example:
- Say engagement numbers seem weak. You can tweak presentations on the spot to gain more traction with passers-by.
- If customer feedback implies you need more information than what you have, you can decide to update collateral.
- Lead generation numbers are staying low, so you might think about switching venues in the future.
Interact directly with your target audience
It’s much easier to generate qualified leads when field marketing happens in front of an already receptive audience. That’s why it’s important to plan and attend events that will draw in customers in need of what your brand offers. Before the event, verify that the event marketing is indeed focusing enough on your target audience.
8 Field marketing strategies for success
Field marketing requires quite a bit of planning to make the execution successful. Each of the following steps helps to make the most of every field marketing effort you make:
1. Find your target audience
Basically, who needs your products or services? Research customer demographics for similar products or services, and then find or plan events that will draw the same kinds of demographics in an audience. Make sure your audience is aware of upcoming events by sending out targeted communications and make them even more compelled to attend with special event-only promotions, exclusive demonstrations, and other incentives.
2. Have tailored collateral
And have it available for every stage of a customer’s journey. Fact sheets, case studies, and swag show your brand’s thoughtfulness and expertise. They also answer customers’ questions and help to keep the brand front of mind during a customer’s decision-making process.
And who doesn’t like getting pens, keychains, and other freebies? They make a potential customer feel like they’ve already benefitted and gotten something good from your brand from the very beginning.
3. Create smart campaigns
With customer data and collateral in hand, you can plan your field marketing strategy and campaigns effectively and efficiently. See what current event trends tell you about the best venues and types of events for your specific marketing initiatives.
Build cohesive, eye-catching displays for your field marketing events. Create a basic presentation script that hits on all important talking points while remaining adaptable to the audience you have.
4. Keep an eye on the competition
Whether a competitor is doing something wrong or right with their marketing efforts, it is to your benefit to know about it either way. Determine what seems to be working for them or not and keep that information in mind when creating your campaigns.
5. Organize things with a content management system
A content management system (CMS) is a centralized hub for images, ads, written content, and other assets for various campaigns. A shared CMS helps field marketers and other teams coordinate their efforts and track successes. Pulling from a single content source not only ensures consistency but convenience; no time is wasted trying to locate an asset when you already know right where it is.
6. Don’t forget digital devices
Printed collateral that you can put in a customer’s hand is great, but you can give yourself an even greater edge with digital offerings. When out and about at events, potential customers will have smartphones and tablets in hand, and they are ready to use them.
Links and QR codes to dedicated websites, videos, and other digital content modernizes your field marketing campaign and makes good use of tools your customers already have.
7. Measure ROI
As mentioned above, in-person events are great ways to aggregate information in real-time about customers and what’s working for them. This data not only supports further field marketing efforts but other sales and marketing initiatives as well. Specialized field marketing software can streamline this process and help you aggregate just the data points you and your team need to determine your ROI.
8. Perform continual outreach
Successful field marketers will quickly and consistently follow up with any leads or other contacts they make at an event. Build on the impression you’ve made at an event and stay in communication to continue that momentum.
Send out “great to meet you” emails, introductions to members of your sales team, promotional offers, and your ongoing availability to provide more information if needed.
Types of field marketing events
Depending on your identified audience, your budget and team members, you have several options to engage with an audience and build relationships.
Some of the most popular options are:
Trade shows
Trade shows tailored to specific industries ensure field marketers can more easily target an interested audience. Automated trade show solutions help you to stay focused on demonstrating your products and connecting with customers while still gathering data and maximizing your event ROI.
Conferences
Especially for B2B field marketers, conferences are a great way to inform others in the same or similar industry about complementary products or services. High-quality conference management will help to ensure lots of well-timed conversations and qualified leads.
Conventions
The ability to showcase new products and product knowledge can give your products and brand added credibility among complementary businesses, as well as interested attendees from the public. With a typically less formal structure than conferences, conventions may give field marketers windows of free time that can be used as opportunities for networking with peers and other presenters.
Roadshows
If customers can’t come to you, you can always come to the customers. With the roadshow approach, you and your field marketing team travels and sets up a product or service demonstration at a business’ location for a set period for their employees and/or customers.
Here, the audience may be smaller than a conference or trade show. But the request to have you come out suggests that the audience will be qualified and interested.
Face-to-face meetings
In-person or virtual meetings with decision makers are a great way for field marketers to follow up with leads from previous events. With undivided attention and typically smaller audiences, these meetings offer a truly personalized touch.
Webinars
If event trends can tell you anything, it’s that virtual events are popular and will only continue to become more so. With unparalleled convenience of access, a remote webinar or meeting only helps to broaden the outreach of an in-person event. It is a great follow-up option after an event, as well.
Benefits of field marketing for event planners
Event planning and field marketing cross paths in a couple of ways. First, event planners can be responsible for creating events specifically for field marketing purposes. In that instance, event planners need to understand field marketers’ basic needs when it comes to venues, presentation spaces, foot traffic, scheduling and event marketing. (Hopefully this article has helped with this understanding!)
Secondly, event planners can also be field marketers themselves. Just like any other industry, event planning can benefit from the face-to-face approach of field marketing. The best kind of field marketing for event planners? The events themselves.
You can be the face of your event, which is a product that you can show off to others interested in creating a new event or participating in an existing one in the future. Then, if your event is successful, it is a product that can sell itself with the follow-up support of a well-designed post-event report, other collateral, and good word of mouth from attendees and participants.
Whether you’re a field marketer, event planner or both, the tools are at your disposal–and the audience is out there–to make the most of your efforts and your ROI.