Many businesses have made digital marketing a top priority in the current digital era to reach new prospects and communicate with existing customers. While tactics like email, social media, and pay-per-click advertising are effective ways of acquiring your audiences, the ability to build relationships through face to face marketing helps increase sales and improve overall brand awareness.
In this article, you’ll discover how face to face marketing can help you improve direct selling efforts to generate leads and close more deals. After all, with face to face tactics amounting to 71% of the sales force, your company needs to nail an in-person strategy to be more effective.
Ready to differentiate from the competition with a personalized strategy? Let’s dive in!
Quick key takeaways:
- Face to face marketing includes anything related to in-person selling like events, store visits, and product tutorials
- In-person selling allows companies to build stronger personal connections and improve visibility in your industry
- It’s essential to combine face to face and digital marketing tactics to improve the customer experience and further influencer buying behavior
What is Face to Face Marketing?
Face to face marketing is the process of selling directly to prospective customers through in-person tactics. Traditionally, face to face marketing includes attending events, scheduling meetings, in-store visits, and product demonstrations.
Why does face to face marketing matter? Face to face marketing is all about creating trust and visibility. While thousands of emails, paid ads, and social posts are published each day, they can never replace human connection and emotion. As a critical marketing pillar, it helps publishers build meaningful relationships, communicate more effectively, and deliver a personal experience outside of the digital world.
Face to Face Marketing Benefits for Direct Selling
While many businesses lean towards digital communications, 60% of professionals prefer to correspond with brands face to face. Now, you certainly shouldn’t toss digital marketing to the side. However, it’s still essential to develop a face to face strategy that helps you build a personal connection with prospective customers.
Here are a few additional benefits that face to face marketing can bring your business:
- Provide a positive experience: By listening to your customer’s challenges and providing how your brand is the solution, you can help your contact feel more valued.
- Communicate more naturally: While many people misconstrue written text, in-person communication allows you to build rapport by using non-verbal cues effectively.
- Increase customer education: Provide valuable insights that target your customer’s questions, challenges, and pain points.
- Improve trust and visibility: Put your brand front in the center of your audience’s attention through in-person connections that lead to long-term loyalty.
4 Tips to Kickstart Your Face to Face Marketing Strategy
If your company focuses on direct selling, face to face marketing can help you close more deals and turn one-time accounts into repeat customers. In-person communication results in a 57% ROI compared to phone meetings that experience a 42% ROI.
Here are a few ways you can get your face to face strategy started:
Tap into Your Customer’s Emotions
While many make purchase decisions based on budget and rationale, it’s hard to deny that stakeholders rely on their emotions. For example, many consumers purchase new products or services based on the following characteristics:
- Looking for validation
- Shopping as a hobby and for fun
- Searching for information instead of buying
- Looking for the easiest purchase experience
- Feeling overwhelmed when shopping
- Searching for a VIP customer experience
With most people falling into the ‘looking for validation’ category, face to face marketing allows companies to be the voice of reason and provide reassurance against any questions to help consumers feel more confident in their decision. For field salespeople, ensure they’re armed with product and brand information to provide during in-person meetings and answer any questions.
Avoid Hard Selling Methods
The truth is that your potential customers don’t want salespeople to sell them on a product or service. Instead, they prefer to do their own discovery research and make a purchase decision when they’re ready, which often occurs across multiple marketing channels.
To be effective, avoid invasive and aggressive selling tactics with your prospects. Instead, focus on soft selling to know your customer’s needs and build long-term relationships. Your sales team can achieve this by setting up discovery calls to hear pain points and provide insights on how your brand can be the solution.
Build a Memorable Brand Identity
While your organization may pour thousands of budget dollars into building a solid brand identity, it often gets lost in the field if salespeople don’t convey your key messaging or brand aesthetic. Since your brand is more than just the colors or mission statement, in-person visits should help highlight commitment, loyalty, and excitement around your company.
Especially true with millennial and Gen Z generations, modern consumers want to align themselves with brands they feel connected to. To successfully convey your brand identity to new customers, train your in-person team on your company’s messaging, mission, and value proposition to embody your brand personality successfully.
Combine In-Person Efforts with Digital Marketing
With any successful marketing campaign, it’s essential to develop a holistic strategy that includes both digital and traditional tactics to provide your customers with an exceptional experience from start to finish. Using digital tactics with face to face marketing allows you to drive customers to your in-person events and provide valuable touch-points after you meet to help close the deal.
Here are a few ways you can create a more impactful strategy with both tactics:
- Optimize your website with ‘schedule a demo’ or ‘visit us today’ call-to-actions
- Include localized search engine optimization keywords to ensure you appear on local result pages
- Share in-person events and tag your customers on your social media profiles
- Utilize geofencing to get in front of local customers on mobile devices
- Claim your local listings on Google My Business, Yelp, and more to appear in map listings
- Provide follow-up thank you email marketing after you meet with a prospect to keep the communication moving forward
Boost Business Growth with Face to Face Marketing
While in-person marketing may seem archaic in the current digital age, many businesses can benefit from a personalized touch. Suppose you’re looking to grow your direct selling division. In that case, it’s essential to couple any digital efforts with face to face marketing to build meaningful connections, improve ROI, and stimulate more trust with prospects.
Ready to improve your direct selling marketing? Contact Boom Communications Group for more information.