Appco UK’s Director of Business Development Rob Gibbs looks at the different marketing methods available and the unique benefits and advantages that can be gained from engaging with customers face to face.
Ensuring people know about your brand, your products or your services can be a hard task. Unless you have millions of pounds in your marketing budget to pay for quality television spots, market saturation is not likely to be all that easy to achieve.
Flyers can all too easily be thrown away without even being viewed, while even the very best magazine adverts can be completely ignored. Online pop-ups can become very annoying and email mail-outs are often consigned to junk before they are even seen by a potential customer. And then there’s face-to-face marketing. Where does this fit in?
Unique sales approach
Face-to-face marketing is somewhat unique when compared to the many other options businesses have when looking to connect with potential customers. With the majority of advertising options, it’s important to reduce what is special about a brand or product down to a simple pithy saying; you need to catch a person’s eye and pique their attention in just a few words, often completely ignoring the product itself in favour of something that will strike a chord.
Face-to-face marketing is different. Through talking to those with an in-depth knowledge of what is on offer, potential customers can find out a huge amount about not just the product, but also how it relates to or benefits them personally, as well as gaining an insight into the ethos of the company as a whole.
Giving brands a personality
One of the most important things that face-to-face marketing can do is give a brand a real personality. Experts in this form of marketing can strike up a rapport with almost anyone and whether or not the person becomes a paying customer, the results of the interaction will almost always be positive.
Not every single person that is seen will want or need what a company has to offer. However, the positive associations that can be formed through an informal face-to-face chat will be ones that are likely to last. Should these individuals need those products or services (or know someone else who does) in the future, there is a good chance that such a personal meeting will be remembered (and in turn potentially acted upon) for far longer than a generic flyer or a pop-up ad.
The personal sales touch
But it’s not just putting a face (and a warm personality) to a brand that can be achieved here. The ability for the sales representative to directly answer individual questions and provide extra information on the spot mean that those who are genuinely interested in what is on offer will be able to learn more without having to do their own research.
In an impersonal, digital age, the importance of personal interaction cannot be overstated. For almost all businesses, forming and fostering relationships with customers will be key for success.
As with any relationship, it’s far easier to do this with a smile and a warm handshake than it is remotely via a phone call or a mass-market TV advert. With a face-to-face meeting, you have someone’s undivided attention – and that is something that not even the most expensive television campaign can guarantee you.