Everyone knows the best part of a Costco run is the free samples. Company reps set up tables around the warehouse, tempting shoppers with delectable bites. For customers, this means snacks to munch on while stocking up on household goods; for companies, it’s a chance to impart brand and product information to their target audience and generate interest in a future purchase. It’s a win-win. It’s also a type of field marketing.
But field marketing isn’t confined to feeding hungry shoppers free samples. Ahead, learn about the main benefits of field marketing as well as field marketing strategies you can use to achieve your business goals.
What is field marketing?
Field marketing involves direct, face-to-face engagement with potential customers to foster relationships, generate leads, and boost sales. Effective field marketing strategies include hosting events, product demonstrations, and in-store promotions, allowing brands to connect personally with their audience.
In a business-to-business (B2B) context, field marketing typically means engaging with prospects in person at trade shows, conferences, seminars, partnership events, or networking events.
In a business-to-consumer (B2C) context, field marketing involves activations like free samples or demos, pop-up shops, event sponsorship, or good old-fashioned door-to-door canvassing.
What does a field marketer do?
A field marketer plans and executes marketing activities that involve direct, face-to-face interactions with prospects or customers. This role often involves planning strategic events like trade shows, pop-ups, and experiential marketing campaigns.
Field marketers may engage in market research to inform their strategy, handle event logistics, and work closely with their sales and marketing teams to align marketing activities with overall business goals.
A field marketer may also:
- Generate and track qualified leads from their activities
- Share product knowledge and collateral
- Measure the return on investment (ROI) for field marketing activities
- Provide weekly or monthly reports on field marketing results
Benefits of field marketing
- Personalized customer engagement
- Immediate feedback
- Accurate targeting
- Measurable ROI
- Improved brand awareness and perception
- New leads for the sales team
A successful field marketing campaign offers six main benefits:
Personalized customer engagement
A big advantage to field marketing is the face-to-face interaction you get with your customers, letting you tailor your messaging to each customer to create more memorable experiences—something that’s typically harder to achieve through digital marketing.
Some in-person marketing strategies include product demonstrations, educational workshops, and pop-up shops that cater to a specific demographic’s needs.
Immediate feedback
With traditional marketing, you can’t see your audience’s response on the spot. You have to wait for customers to provide feedback—if they provide any at all.
By contrast, field marketers receive immediate feedback through customer reactions, which allows them to make quick adjustments. By taking notes of verbal and non-verbal cues, conducting Q&A sessions, or providing surveys and feedback forms, you can leverage immediate feedback to enhance your future products and campaigns.
Accurate targeting
Because field marketing efforts are highly localized, you can literally meet your audience where they are. For example, a sports apparel company could send a street team to give out coupons to basketball game attendees.
Since field marketers speak directly with consumers, they can gauge whether they constitute the right target market, in real time, based on immediate feedback. You can then tailor messaging to this audience and context.
Measurable ROI
Field marketing offers the ability to immediately measure return on investment (ROI). Measurable ROI provides insights into the success of your initiatives and justifies future resource allocation. Since field marketing allows for one-to-one communication with customers over a specific period, it’s a fairly measurable strategy.
Here are the most common ways to measure ROI for a successful field marketing strategy:
- # of people reached
- # of leads generated
- # of new customers
- Sales revenue during the field marketing campaign
- % lift in sales in the period after the field marketing campaign
Improved brand awareness and perception
With customers inundated with ads every day, field marketing allows you to stand out from the competition. Trade shows, events, product demonstrations, and experiences can enhance your visibility, while meaningful, personal interactions stick with customers.
For example, when Red Bull sponsors extreme sporting events, representatives hand out free cases of Red Bull on college campuses with an aim of enhancing its image among a young, adventurous crowd.
New leads for the sales team
Field marketing representatives gather leads by building relationships with or capturing the contact information of prospective customers at events and qualifying them (by determining their likelihood of making a purchase) during face-to-face interactions. In some cases, field marketing managers might even sell products at events. These are all ways field marketing can take pressure off your sales teams, letting them use their time to build on top of the lead generation work the field marketing team does.
Types of field marketing campaigns
Here are five types of field marketing tactics:
Trade shows
Trade shows are industry-specific exhibitions that showcase products and services to a targeted group. B2C trade shows let you set up kiosks, speak with customers, and demo your products in person. B2B trade shows allow companies to connect with other businesses that might be interested in carrying their products.
Pop-up shops
Pop-up shops are temporary retail stores that "pop up" for a few days to several weeks, letting you engage directly with customers, generate buzz, and drive sales, without investing in a long-term retail lease.
Pop-up shops can take place anywhere from shopping malls to event spaces and food trucks, with products for consumers to engage with, try, and buy. Because pop-ups are limited by nature, offering special promotions and experiences can be a great way to create hype.
While the pop-up shop may include interactive elements, the main goal is to sell products. This can be especially successful for exclusively online brands, letting customers see and try products in real life. For example, Glossier’s pop-up shops had a whopping 60% average conversion rate.
In the case of the footwear company Maguire Shoes, pop-up success helped validate the launch of a retail store. "When we were doing pop-ups and in-person events, we realized we were making sales for all the month after because we would meet people in person. People try the product,” founder Myriam Belzile-Maguire told the Shopify Masters podcast. “So we felt like having a retail presence made sense in our business, especially when people want to try shoes for the first time, at least once. And then once they know they like the brand and they like their quality, and then they feel more comfortable buying online."
Immersive experiences
Memorable, immersive experiences keep your brand top of mind. Also known as experiential marketing, immersive experiences aren’t necessarily designed to sell products but to engage with customers to influence long-term behavior. (Some confuse experiential marketing with event marketing; experiential marketing may include events, but not always.)
For example, The Zone was an immersive Britney Spears–themed experience in which fans moved through intricately decorated rooms and took photos of themselves all along the way. Launched for a short period in Los Angeles in early 2020, the event’s business objectives were less about selling CDs and more about improving the star’s brand perception.
In-person events
Events don’t need to be big-budget over-the-top productions to be memorable, but they need to provide value to attendees and marketing results for you. For example, Wealthsimple offers other businesses Lunch n’ Learns—info sessions for team members during lunchtime—to educate employees on the value of investing. Other in-person examples include conferences and workshops.
Guerrilla marketing
Guerrilla marketing campaigns are unpredictable, unconventional, and creative strategies that capture attention and generate buzz. Guerrilla marketing is usually low-cost—the real investment is the creative power it takes to pull off a successful campaign.
Guerrilla campaigns could include flash mobs, street teams, public stunts, or interactive installations in unexpected locations. Rihanna pulling out her Fenty setting powder during her 2023 Super Bowl halftime show is an example of guerrilla marketing—one that led to a spike in searches for Fenty Beauty.
Field marketing FAQ
Is field marketing worth it?
Field marketing is typically worth it because it lets you connect directly with your target audience and build face-to-face customer relationships. Depending on the type of campaign, it can be a low-investment way to increase brand awareness and generate leads in a targeted way.
What is the difference between channel marketing and field marketing?
Channel marketing focuses on selling products through indirect sales channels like retail partners, while field marketing involves direct engagement with end customers or prospects.
What is an example of a field marketing strategy?
An example of a field marketing strategy is product demonstrations, in which a field marketing representative showcases a product’s features and benefits directly to a potential customer.
