Field marketing is part of marketing, where a business or company gets its products or services ‘out in the field’, in front of their customers. This can be at public locations, retail location, colleges and other outdoor and indoor events.
The purposes of field marketing differ, depending on the company and campaign. However, some common goals of field marketing include brand awareness, improving sales at target areas and increasing engagement with established customers.
Types of field marketing campaigns
Product demonstrations – this is the most common activity in field marketing. For companies dealing with food and beverages, they use giveaways, where the company’s sales reps give free samples to shoppers at retail malls, students at colleges or members of public on the street. For businesses dealing with non-consumable goods, they offer product demos, where potential buyers receive hands-on training on using the product or even seeing the product in action.
Direct sales – here, the company sales reps usually make sales to buyers at the point of interaction. Mostly, companies typically pair product demonstrations with direct sales, capitalizing on the customer’s interest in trying the product. Other types of field marketing which concentrate on direct sales include promotional stands at an event and pop-up shops.
Retail audits – not every field marketing initiative involves a direct contact with the consumer. A business can rely on field teams to do an audit to understand how their traditional marketing strategies are presented in retail stores. In a retail audit, field teams collect data to get an insight of how their products, signage and promotional materials are displayed in different retail locations. The retail audit has two benefits:
Helps marketing managers to get an insight of the effectiveness of their marketing strategies in various stores.
They give companies the chance to correct their past mistakes and capitalize on the effectiveness of their point-of-sale marketing strategies.
Guerilla marketing – it is named from a type of warfare known for its notorious hit-and-run nature. Guerilla marketing strategies are very unpredictable. Companies use ‘guerilla marketing’ while referring to creative marketing campaigns that target buyers in locations and ways that they never expected. Guerilla marketing strategies do not require a lot of financing, but they definitely require a lot of energy and imagination. That is the reason why companies rely on ‘foot soldiers’ to execute the marketing strategies.
