How Does Field Marketing Work?

It could be suggested that 'marketing' is a word that the vast majority of us are familiar with. However, 'field marketing' is perhaps a term that many of us are not so used to seeing. Interestingly, it is more than likely that you have participated in field marketing without knowing it. This is not to suggest that field marketing is a dubious practice, only that sometimes it is a one way system of communication.

How, therefore can you have been involved in field marketing? Often, field marketing takes place in the distribution of samples to customers in order to raise their awareness of a particular brand or product. Your participation is dependent on whether or not your perception of that particular product changes after having tried it, in particular whether your buying habits change after having sampled it. In this sense, field marketing is a very tangible way of both measuring sales and attempting to increase sales. However, this is just one of the ways that field marketing is done and there are others.

What is meant by a one way system of communication, is that field marketing rarely asks for a consumer's opinion on a product and instead bases its results on sales and spending habits. Interestingly however, social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have somewhat changed the way that field marketing works. Companies may now ask their followers for feedback on samples via social networking sites, making field marketing seem more like a conversation.

Field marketing companies will provide the staff for companies to deploy their marketing tactics, ensuring that the staff used is experienced and fully trained. This keeps costs down for the client and gives the marketing more stability. This may be to distribute samples, but it could be purely to gather information through things such as mystery shopping. Field marketing companies will feed back to their clients with detailed reports in order to show them how they can make the most out of their brand and what they will do for them in the future. There is a sense that if clients can see how their investments in field marketing are improving their business, then this will justify future activity.

Field marketing companies do not just deal with large campaigns, they can plan for all sorts of events whether they are long term or short notice one off events. Perhaps this flexibility and professional knowledge is one of things that make them appealing. Although conventional advertising is undoubtedly one way to increase your profit margins, there is a sense that field marketing is perhaps a more pro-active way of monitoring consumer habits and working towards increasing sales, with very visible correlation and results.