If you have been researching marketing techniques for your business you might have heard of field marketing – but what exactly is this discipline of marketing and how does it work?
Field marketing is a traditional style of marketing that involves interacting with customers “in the field.” It could include distributing, selling, auditing or sampling promotions and it is differentiated because it involves face to face personal contact direct marketing. Events, experiential marketing, sampling and demonstrations, auditing and mystery shopping are examples of field marketing.
Developing a Field Marketing Campaign
Instead of broadcasting a message through a single channel, such as a television or radio advertisement, the message that is communicated through field marketing will vary according to the communication skills of the people in contact with the customer. This is why effective field marketing relies so much on effective training of personnel.
A field marketing campaign will focus on engaging directly with customers, so that it can be much more effective and better address those customer’s needs. When you are selecting a field marketing agency to put together a face to face campaign for your business it is important to make sure that they have the right experience. This is the key to ensuring that your campaign will yield the results necessary. Your business is unique, so your plan for a field marketing campaign should also be one of a kind – tailored to your specific needs.
When you are developing a field marketing campaign it is a good idea to engage the services of a professional agency with a lot of experience, as they will understand the challenges of field marketing and ensure that your campaign runs as smoothly as possible. A field marketing professional will be able to give support to a marketing operation, which will include counteracting the campaign and increasing market distribution.
There are a few important questions that you should be asking yourself when you are developing a field marketing campaign, such as:
- What are the questions you want to know about the performance of your business?
- What type of areas within the realm of marketing do you want to focus on?
- When it comes to using a mystery shopping company, what aspects of the customer experience do you want the shopper to focus on and report back to you about?
- What is the scope of the field marketing campaign – is it a small scale project or a large scale initiative?
- What is your budget for the campaign? How much do you have to invest?
- What is your time span for the campaign? Will you develop it over several years or is it a short term endeavour?
Types of Field Marketing Campaigns
Field marketing can apply to a number of different types of campaigns, including the following:
Product Sampling and Demonstrations
These are often done within supermarket stores, as well as at fairs and trade shows. The goal of this marketing campaign is to engage every customer who samples the product and encourage them to buy the product. They might also hand out pamphlets or encourage the customer to fill out a contact card for future promotions.
In Store Promotions
These types of field marketing campaigns involve marketing to your own customer base when they are already on location to purchase a related product. You can use this as lead generation to talk to customers and find out more about what they are looking for. It is important to find the balance between being seen as pushy and genuinely suggesting something that will be beneficial for the customer.
Street Promotions
This type of marketing involves sending a team into a crowded area to distribute coupons, incentive cards and other promotional items. For
example, marketers might pass out cards or game pieces in order to promote a particular brand or product.
Some street promotions can be very creative… adrants.com
Mystery Shopping
This is a different type of field marketing that allows a business to gain an unbiased perspective on what the experience of shopping at their store is like for a customer. A mystery shopper enters the store on a number of occasions pretending to be a customer looking for a specific item, then reports back on how their queries were handled as well as other observations about the store that you would like to know about.
These are just a few of the types of field marketing and how they work. If you feel like field marketing will benefit your company, why not contact a company that specialises in it to develop a campaign that suits your needs?
