For those not familiar with the various types of Field Marketing campaigns, their benefits, drawbacks/limitations etc, here’s a breakdown of how field marketing services can support and grow brands, products and services.
Field Marketing
Field marketing is a blanket term for the industry in which we work. This term is generally used to cover all campaign requirements that can be supported by field marketing services.
In general, field marketing is referrininimising g to sampling, hand to hand, informational, merchandising, public relations, and a variety of real world advertising etc.
Taken as a whole, field marketing is a brilliant way to supplement your online and offline advertising methods.
Generally field marketing services are a cost effective way to amplify the impact of efforts. Be it through person to person communication, or ensuring retail sales are not hindered by poor display/restocking.
Field marketing services are usually tailored to suit your specific campaign requirements therefore there are no prices on our website, so please contact us if you require a quote for future campaigns.
Merchandising
Merchandising centres around ensuring your products, point of sale, and other sales materials are displayed correctly in the retail environment.
When merchandising is conducted it’s often discovered that stock is NOT sited correctly and commercial agreements are not being adhered to. At worst your products may not be out on display at all.
Our field staff ensure stores are compliant with the agreements you made with their head office.
CFM have many case studies of successful merchandising campaigns. Our most recent example is a vast national campaign on behalf of 10 Motives e-cigarettes, which spanned thousands of stores, many hundreds of our staff, and a large amount of organisation.
10 Motives e-cigarettes saw their sales increase as a direct result of the merchandising support. In-store staff were trained, customer brand awareness was raised, stock levels were checked and point of sale was sited.
This extensive merchandising campaign ensured 10 Motives were well displayed on the counter display unit. The CDU was was first sited during a POS placement campaign, and then supported by regular merchandising activity – ensuring the 10 motives brand was always in the forefront of customers minds.
Point of Sale Placement
Point of sale can make a huge difference to your product being noticed on the shelves, or the product which is constantly in the eyes of those queueing for the tills.
If you have commercial agreements with any supermarket allowing you to site Point of Sale in their stores, you need to get the best out of your investment by ensuring complete compliance for the duration of your contract.
Eye catching and informative Point of Sale, accurate stock keeping, prompt restocking, products merchandised to planogram all dramatically raise brand awareness, increase sales and grow your business.
Contact Field Marketing can manage the logistics behind getting your point of sale around the country to our field team who will walk the Point of Sale into stores. Whilst in store, the staff can record stock levels, educate and inform in-store staff, and check competitor activity.
Point of sale placement tends to go hand in hand with audits/compliance checks and merchandising as complimentary services.
Auditing and Compliance Checks
Clients sometimes identify an issue with lack of sales in-store and need to find out why. Often conducted alongside merchandising, auditing your products allows you to gather data on how and where your products are being displayed, stock levels, pricing, sales, competitor activity etc.
After an audit/compliance check it can become very clear where improvements need to be made – whether that be the field team discussing any issues whilst in store or our clients may need to speak to their contact at the stores head office to gain agreement to send out a broad message to all stores reminding them to display your products correctly.
Brand Promotion
We’re at a time in history where logos are instantly recognisable to the majority of us. This is thanks to extensive, consistent marketing efforts conducted by these brands.
The end goal of most field marketing is realistically brand promotion – so this service can straddle quite a few other services, which makes it an effective method of increasing your business’ turnover.
A quality brand promotion campaign can be very fruitful for your product/service. Brand promotion is essentially a combination of Field Marketing services such as demonstrations, sampling, and give-aways to name a few.
Every service is designed to create a longer-term sales drive, maximizing the return on your investment.
Product and Food Sampling
A favourite in the field marketing world – what better way to help people decide if they want to buy your product whether it be food or drink than giving them a taster or sample?
This method of field marketing is well proven to directly increase sales, particularly in busy shopping areas where many people can try before they buy.
This works especially well for food and drinks sampling as the actual cost of the sample can be relatively low.
Zespri Filed Marketing Campaign in Tesco stores nationwide.
Product Demonstrating
Some products don’t stand out until you see them working with your own eyes. Product demonstration is just that – our staff are trained to use your product to a high standard, and will be knowledgeable about the typical FAQs.
Product demonstrations often support national TV advertising campaigns attracting crowds of people interested in seeing exactly how the product works.
Having an interactive experience gives people the opportunity to really know how a product works and feels before they buy.
This experience is proven to increase the likelihood of a consumer converting into a customer.
Product Uplift / Crisis Management
There are many reasons you may need to uplift products from stores – from minor issues such as incorrect packaging, to serious health risks such as an error in manufacturing which made an entire batch of your product potentially hazardous.
In such a situation, it’s essential that a product recall campaign is turned around as fast as possible to reduce risk to the public, and the real risk of a public relations nightmare for your brand.
We have carried out many campaigns such as this for a variety of clients – our rapid turnaround times with our huge database of staff make us highly effective for uplifting products on a national level.
Publication Distribution
In the world of magazine or newspaper production, time is against you. You want your publication to be in the hands of the public on the day it’s published. This isn’t often possible when people are simply left to pick it up or buy it.
CFM&S’s full service distribution solution includes multiple national hubs who bring tens of thousands of magazines directly to field hand to hand distributors.
Using Contact Field Marketing’s tried and tested distribution service all you have to do is deliver copies to our warehouse.
A team of distribution staff are deployed in your selected areas, the van driver supported by a CFM Supervisor drops the magazines at the agreed distribution points ready for the teams.
Left over copies are collected at the end of each shift, taken back to the warehouse to await your instructions (recycling, next day distribution, collection). ABC reports can also be produced if required. Couldn’t be easier!
Leafleting/Flyering
Hand to hand leafleting/flyering is a classic example of field marketing. It’s simple, yet very effective.
Easy to do, but a top performing leafleting campaign requires careful consideration and planning of multiple channels – including selecting busy distribution locations, timing, design and information on the leaflet, appearance of the staff promoting your product or service, and the intended target audience.
Staff need to be smart, proactive, approachable, knowledgeable and professional at all times. Branded clothing for a uniformed look and to raise brand awareness is always a great idea.
Ideally leaflets need to be relevant to the person receiving it therefore the team needs to be fully briefed and aware of your target audience.
One of the main strengths of hand to hand distribution is the ability to choose an audience to distribute to and directly target them in the field, knowing where and when they will be.
Exhibitions, Festivals and Events
It can be difficult to staff one-off or irregular events with your own staff as they may be needed in the office or have other operational needs.
We are here for you and can supply staff with a variety of skills for your events. Over the years CFM have supplied staff to support our clients on their stands at most of the large Exhibition Centres, Events and Festivals throughout the UK.
Duties have included attracting visitors to the stand, handing out samples, making cups of tea/coffee, handing out water or other drinks, preparing food, handing out information leaflets, even collecting data etc etc.
The ideal events staff will also keep your area tidy at all times, they will always be ready to sample or talk, looking for your target market, and generally making your product/service look like something the consumer needs.
If you need people, we can help.
Road Shows
Road shows are very similar to our events offerings, but of course road shows travel around – and our staff can too! Over the years we have managed all aspects of putting together a number of national Roadshows.
Our extensive database often makes it possible for us to also select staff who are multilingual, if your Roadshow needs to visit Countries in Europe such as Germany, France, Spain or others.
Temporary promotional staff supplied for A TNT exhibition.
Fulfilment and Warehousing
This is one of our newer services – many of our clients were being let down by poor picking and packing of items such as product samples, advertising materials, even countertop display units which often arrived damaged, or too few turned up to stores or field staff – preventing them beginning their work.
This sort of logistical hold up can negatively effect the timeline of your marketing plans, ultimately impacting brand awareness and sales.
A minor error in the distribution of materials on a time sensitive campaign can have very disruptive effects. We now offer this service to our clients to help reduce the weak links in their field marketing process, ensuring better-spent money and harder hitting campaigns.
Simply send your promotional materials to us. We will correctly collate, pack and dispatch to field staff on time (also allowing time for any non-arrivals to be rectified). This ensures our field staff will be ready to walk in and site your materials in store – dramatically reducing the risk of damage or non-compliance that is very common during direct to store delivery.
Digital to Physical Sampling
If you’re offering free samples online to people who supply their emails, or like your facebook page etc then you will need to be sending out deliveries regularly.
We can handle this entire process for you – all you need to do is send us the names, emails, delivery information etc daily and the items can then be picked and packed and sent out on the same day.
Contact us to discuss this service.
Recruitment
Our newest service! If you’re looking for FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) staff on a more permanent basis, we can source the people you need, with a nominal cost. You wont find cheaper in the industry.
All you need to do is send us your staff requirements, job description, salary, area, etc etc and utilising our national database of registered staff we can post a job alert.
Once we receive the responses, we can shortlist suitable candidates we feel should be put forward for interview.
Clients who have used this service are companies such as Lindt, Euro Pro/Shark and Procter&Gamble.
Its a stress free, simple process which affords you more time to concentrate on other aspects of your work rather than sifting through poor CVs to find a few good ones – ultimately saving you time and money.
