Field marketing continues to be one of the more helpful event formats for CPG brands desiring to drum up demand for their products. Field marketing combines the very best of marketing and sales to provide companies with a distinctive method of constructing authentic relationships with their prospects and customers.
In this post, we will examine how you can adapt field marketing techniques to achieve sustainable development of consumer demand and increase sales of your products.
Field marketing is precisely what its name suggests. It is an experiential kind of promotion that includes onsite marketing activities such as on-premise or street promotions, product demonstration, in store sampling, merchandising, and direct sales.
If you look closely, you will understand that field marketing is basically the AIDA (Attention, Desire, Interest, and Action) concept in action. Field marketing activities are created around getting the target audience's interest, creating interest in and desire to have your offerings, moreover eventually driving action, i.e., income.
You can think of field marketing as a combination of push-pull marketing. You hook up with your potential customers at the places they congregate, i.e., retail stores, and follow up with a more personalized approach to engage them to experience your product as they advance through the various phases of the buying journey, i.e., pull marketing.
Field marketing and brand activation specialists collaborate with sales and marketing teams to achieve common company objectives. Field marketing plays a role in an organization's marketing and sales framework since it allows you to:
● Gain an unparalleled knowledge of your perfect customer profile (ICP)
● Create accurate sales marketing alignment with a collaborative approach to prospecting and demand generation
● Align your brand messaging to company goals.
● Help your sales force gain more and better shelf space, build the product sales pipeline, and hit revenue goals.
● Complement your digital strategy with in-person activities.
● Collect invaluable customer experience insights.
Field marketing provides means for CPG brands to interact one-on-one with consumers of their products. It allows you to discover what customers think about your brand offerings and understand whether they have complaints about your product.
Below are five reasons you should look into field marketing.
1. Betters brand perception
The average consumer is exposed to more than 1,700 ads per month. The consumer's mind completely tunes out the vast majority of these ads. It is tough to generate your brand memorable solely through advertising.
Field marketing creates that chance to communicate with your customers in person, delivering memorable experiences that can help you enhance your brand recall and perception.
2. Improves customer experience
Customer experience includes interactions at each brand touchpoint. Field marketing can be a significant touchpoint since it enables buyers to interact face-to-face with a CPG brand. Shoppers can discover the right way to use the item more effectively and share their stories and pain points with their friends, relatives, and colleagues to spark Word Of Mouth Marketing ripples.
3. Supports the sales team
Field marketing can help support the product sales department by optimizing the nurturing process. Thus, whether it is speaking with buyers at a retail store or even helping store employees learn how to position your offerings on the shelves, field marketing can help your sales team.
4. Collect precise market data
Field advertising is a consumer-facing activity. You receive qualitative info when you speak with people that are real. You can discover why a product feature sells very well or the reason it is tough to work with. When quantitative data is enriched with this information, you're better prepared to make informed choices.
5. Track ROI accurately
Most field marketing activities, like in-store sampling events, and product demonstrations, generate a dramatic increase in the products sold during the campaigns. These gains should be cross-referenced with wholesale product orders immediately following the date of the events. This approach would allow you to observe your ROI accurately.
Top field marketing activities include events, roadshows, demonstrations, sampling, merchandising, and more. The list is endless. Nevertheless, the essential component of field marketing is interactivity with your potential customers.
1. Product demonstrations
Product demos are a field marketing favorite! Field marketing allows buyers to sample your services and products and offers a perfect setting for personalized interactions. CPG brands utilize this method at shopping malls, retail stores, and other higher foot traffic areas where they can ask buyers personally to experience their products. For instance, a cheese or a power bar brand can give away samples of recently launched products, along with a relevant "story" about why this product is better than its competitors.
2. In-person events
In-person events outside of the retail environment are the most effective field marketing avenue for DTC CPG Brands. They are helpful because brand ambassadors have more flexibility in interacting with motivated consumers. These events are by-invitation parties, how-to seminars, and workshops, group meetings.
Having adequate time to create personalized relationships compels field marketing executives to invest much in in-person events.
CPG brands also spend money on other event formats like roadshows to attain broader awareness.
3. Guerrilla marketing
Guerrilla is the development hacking edge of field marketing. This tactic deploys ingenious stunts to entice the audience's interest within a concise time frame. An innovative guerrilla-marketing plan has the potential to generate buzz and drive word of mouth among your ideal customers.
Although the guerrilla marketing method is usually promoted as a low-cost marketing strategy, it is challenging to produce a campaign because there is no fixed framework or structure for it. It's advisable to try conventional field marketing techniques before considering a high risk with a low probability of a high-reward guerrilla campaign.
Field marketing is primarily about building relationships through in-person interactions. The in-person experience of field marketing is what causes it to be very compelling and memorable. In a nutshell, word-of-mouth is an effective form of customer acquisition. Let your customers do the talking for your brand.
