Smart Circle University: Face-to-Face Marketing 101

by EPR Staff · Published 2021-12-22 · Updated 2023-03-14

Welcome to Smart Circle University. Today’s focus is on face-to-face marketing, the most important piece of the success puzzle for this team of marketing and sales experts. At Smart Circle University, you will learn quickly that face-to-face sales and marketing initiatives sit at the epicenter of every campaign rolled by the marketing brokerage. In today’s University 101, we will focus on answering the following questions to give you a comprehensive understanding of face-to-face marketing hopefully and how/why Smart Circle uses this specific marketing technique to propel its clients to success:

Who is Smart Circle?
What is face-to-face marketing?
What makes face-to-face marketing different from other styles of marketing plays?
What are face-to-face Marketing’s Most Commonly Used Strategies?
How does face-to-face marketing help businesses grow their bottom line?
What are the advantages of face-to-face marketing when focused on customer acquisitions?

Smart Circle gathers repeated client successes by creating and implementing customized in-person sales campaigns uniquely fashioned for each client. The key ingredient in the success of these campaigns is the company’s innovative use of direct sales and marketing strategies or what you might call face-to-face marketing.

This is Smart Circle University: Face-to-Face Marketing 101

Who is Smart Circle?

Smart Circle International (SCI) is a leading broker of outsourced sales. In addition to Fortune 500 companies, nationally recognized brands, and regional and local businesses, we provide successful sales and marketing solutions to an eclectic and diverse clientele scattered among most business sectors. Smart Circle harnesses the power of a nationwide independent sale network composed of independently owned and operated sales companies and their respective sales representatives. Smart Circle designs customized face-to-face sales and marketing campaigns across multiple channels nationwide.

What is face-to-face marketing?

Direct marketing to potential customers through in-person communication is known as Face-to-Face Marketing (F2F). It facilitates meaningful brand-positive interactions through client meetings, sales events, product demonstrations, in-store visits, and events.

Face-to-Face Marketing might also be referred to as:

Direct Marketing
In-person Marketing
Pop-up Marketing
A conversation with a customer to pitch your business and its product/service offering (informal)
A conversation with a potential consumer at an event, trade show, or convention (formal)
A product or service demo in a relevant retail setting
Door-to-door canvassing (residential)
Business-to-business canvassing

Smart Circle International views face-to-face marketing as the art of building relationships in person. Today, many brands focus on digital marketing offering to find clients on the web, in their email, or on social media, in television commercials, and even radio. As digital marketing channels become more crowded, what happens when people automatically click delete before reading their emails or turn down those radio jingles?

What makes face-to-face marketing different from all other marketing plays?

To stay relevant, brands must keep their products in front of consumers. Smart Circle creates face-to-face marketing and sales campaigns to help clients start conversations around their offering with targeted consumers in a retail setting, through activations and events, or via door-to-door canvassing. The Smart Circle platform employs face-to-face marketing strategies to help its clients conveniently listen to the consumer.

The authority and control of a conversation cannot be underestimated. Whether it be while door-to-door canvassing, in a retail environment, or at an event, it’s the most reliable and convincing way to know your audience is receiving and comprehending the features and benefits of your client’s product or service.

What are face-to-face Marketing’s Most Commonly Used Strategies?

If you fail to determine where the target consumers will be, face-to-face marketing campaigns will prove ineffective. Whether it’s at home, on Saturdays, or at the mall, you’ve failed. By placing the product or service you are selling next to a knowledgeable brand ambassador who can sell it to anyone, your face-to-face marketing strategies stand a much better chance of success.

Strategic locations commonly used by Smart Circle to give their face-to-face marketing initiatives the best chance to succeed include:

Events
Retail Store locations
Product Launches
Select Neighborhoods (Door-to-door Canvassing)
Select Commercial Areas (business-to-business)

How does face-to-face marketing help businesses grow their bottom line?

It gives marketers real-time feedback and a chance to pivot.

Face-to-face marketing allows real-time feedback from your consumers. The brand ambassadors have a moment to adjust the pitch in whatever way might be needed to suit that particular audience based on signs from the consumer either through their speech. But more often through their body language.

The brand ambassador may pivot to the hands-on approach. Then, the consumer could try the product as if they had purchased it. Allowing the customer to interact with a given product can make a huge difference in whether the sale is made. Overall, face-to-face marketing allows for these pivots, leading to a truly successful sale. And such nimble endeavors would be very difficult for a tv commercial or a tweet to accomplish.

Cost-effective for clients

By conducting in-person demonstrations in retail stores where consumers are ready to buy, an outsourced sales company with experience in face-to-face marketing can ensure your message reaches as many potential customers as possible at one time.

Gain valuable product/business insight from target consumers in real-time.

Smart Circle works with independent sales companies that serve as face-to-face marketers for clients. They represent the products or services the clients are offering. They hear client feedback all day long and adjust their presentation if the input is not what they expected.

In every face-to-face interaction, you gain valuable information from the consumer. The data is passed on to people who may influence the product’s creation, pricing, and sale. Customers’ opinions of a product or service can be shaped by listening to and addressing their concerns. The result is the sale of a product and creating a customer for life.

What are the advantages of face-to-face marketing when focused on customer acquisitions?

Face-to-face marketing offers consumers three fundamental benefits: in-depth communication, the relationship generated with the brand, and trust.

In-depth communication

The advantages of face-to-face marketing include direct communication with customers. Marketers gain a deep understanding of their products this way. Sellers know all of the benefits and are prepared to suggest solutions when problems arise.

By asking the right questions at the right time, the marketer can gain a deeper understanding of the consumer’s needs and thereby land the sale. Through conversation, the face-to-face marketer can find out how the person feels about the product and their priorities through questions specific to the individual. Face-to-face marketers consider all of the consumer’s pain points during the subsequent conversation. It is possible to dissect the reasons behind objections and find positives beyond negative perceptions when marketing face-to-face.

It allows consumers to create a relationship with the brand.

Real-life sales ambassadors humanize the brand. Face-to-face marketing allows marketers to learn the intricacies of each consumer. These skills become valuable when relationship building and closing deals.

Face-to-face marketers are already familiar with the industry. There are many perspectives regarding the product or service that can be discussed within various scenarios. By doing this, they create relationships with potential customers and between the customers and the product.

Encourages Trust

The alliance forged through the personalized exchange among the brand ambassador and the consumer, coupled with product knowledge, acts together to form the final face-to-face marketing advantage. Trust.

In the process of growing that trust, the face-to-face marketer will:

Focus all discussions on the customer’s needs and desires
Ensure they ask relevant questions concerning the customer and the product
Prove their worth
Always speak the truth
Positively affirm all interactions

There is an ability to communicate in-depth, build relationships, and establish trust with face-to-face marketing. Personalized, face-to-face marketing has these advantages over impersonal advertising. Whether big or small, local or international, companies make their brands personal by meeting their consumers face-to-face.

Thank you for joining us for the face-to-face marketing edition of Smart Circle University. Join us again for future seminars where we will explore everything from brand awareness and customer acquisition to choosing to lead and lessons on finding the entrepreneur inside.

About Smart Circle

At Smart Circle, the goal is to provide our clients with access to customized face-to-face marketing and sales solutions by connecting our clients with a dynamic network of independent sale companies, creating opportunities for businesses everywhere to thrive and reach their goals. Smart Circle is a leading broker of outsourced sales. We design successful face-to-face sales and in-person marketing solutions for our clients, including Fortune 500 companies, nationally recognized brands, and regional and local businesses. By harnessing the power of a nationwide network comprised of independently owned and operated sales companies and their respective sales representatives,
Smart Circle enables clients to take advantage of customized face-to-face marketing and in-person sales solutions across various channels. Whether through nationwide face-to-face marketing campaigns inside the top retail chains or targeted business-to-business or door-to-door canvassing campaigns. Smart Circle helps clients drive bottom-line results unmatched by any other form of traditional sales and marketing and supports clients in achieving their customer acquisition, brand awareness, and revenue goals.