When live events were suddenly canceled and employees shifted to remote work, most field marketers went into shock. With their marketing plans in tatters and sales needing a completely different kind of support, they had to act fast to develop new leads, fill pipelines, and support sales in completely new ways. For those who didn't understand digital, the shock was overwhelming. For those who already understood digital and had put a strategy in place before the pandemic, they were able to act fast.

We asked 15 top field marketing and account-based marketing professionals to reimagine what field marketing would be like in the future. All of the experts I interviewed agreed that things would never be the same. Surprisingly, most agreed that field marketing would play an even bigger role in the buyer's journey and all felt compelled to raise their digital game. Each contributor shared how their insights about highly personalized content marketing strategies, producing professional digital events, developing new sales strategies, and how they are partnering with customers and suppliers in innovative ways. And even when live events come back, their event plans will be completely integrated into a digital-first strategy.

This Mighty Guide explores where things were, what these experts did, and where they see things going. One thing is certain, this is an exciting time for field marketing. Thanks for reading!

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What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

Before the shift to remote work, we talked a lot about digital marketing, but we still focused heavily on in-person events. These events are expensive and not always effective. We needed to do more digital, automated, data-driven marketing, but it was difficult to break habits and change—for ourselves and even our customers. Recent events and the need to go digital have been a huge catalyst for us. We are now accelerating a transformation that has been on the agenda for a while, a shift to digital marketing that focuses on inbound communications—pull marketing instead of push marketing.

The transition for us was definitely disruptive, like being hit by a bulldozer. That said, the crisis has also shown how the brand really matters. We had invested a lot in branding, so customers know us as a responsible company that follows a strong drive to help businesses run better while improving people’s lives. I think that in crisis, more than ever it pays off to have a history of being a company that cares and is not afraid to choose sides. The foundation you build in terms of the brand is critical in a crisis. People want to know what a company stands for, what its point of view is on important topics.

Malin Liden is a results-oriented, passionate, entrepreneurial executive with 20 years of experience operating between sales and marketing. She believes that sustainable leadership comes from building consensus while driving results, bringing together global, regional, and local teams irrespective of formal reporting structures.

Malin Liden,

Vice President & Head of Strategic Programs, Global Field Marketing, SAP

How did you approach the shift to remote work?

Instead of immediately focusing on what to do now, looking for the first opportunities to sell to a world in crisis, we looked to support companies, invest in the relationships, show that we care. We offered a lot of things for free, focusing on the parts of our portfolio that could support companies during the pandemic and investing in resilience across our ecosystem.

Showing that you care starts with listening. It’s tempting to do what a lot of people are doing—say, “Ah, you must be interested in buying supply chain solutions because this is a challenging area for companies right now.” It’s possible, however, that companies are just focusing on surviving. So, if I come with my supply chain message, it could feel to them that I’m trying to take advantage of the situation.
Crisis situations require a lot of empathy, the ability to understand where business

If you do content marketing well, people will want to come to you based on what you share. You will not have to chase after them.

partners are at the moment. That is possible only if we listen carefully and let them guide the discussion, telling us what they need and how we can help rather than forcing ourselves on people whose concerns and priorities may be very different from what we assume.

How do field marketers position themselves where they can actually hear what’s going on and respond appropriately?

One of the biggest opportunities for marketing in the future will be in nurturing communities. It’s about being part of the conversation rather than trying to own, dictate, or steer the discussions. Being part of the conversation is a privilege, and you have to earn it. If you insert yourself into a conversation too aggressively, or if you are trying to dominate the space, then you won’t earn the right to be part of it, and you are damaging relationships. If you earn your place in a network based on the value you add, you are investing in the relationships, giving you access to a goldmine of information and insights that put you in a much better position to actually know what does and does not resonate.

Similarly, I think that influencer marketing will be even more important in the future. The more closely you work with influencers in your area, the stronger the relationships you can build. They can be a great way to know what’s going on in the market in a less filtered way than we have been used to. That also takes courage and the willingness not just to listen but also to act on feedback that is not favorable. That’s how you earn trust. If you partner closely with influencers, inviting them to innovate with you, shape your company’s future together with you, they can become your best and most credible advocates.

What tactics have helped you transition from in-person to digital events?

I think it’s tempting for everyone to do webinars because they are the closest digital option we know to in-person events. The experience is not the same, however. For example, attendees cannot network the same way, at the dinners or

in the coffee area, and the entertainment, which is a platform for relationship building, does not work the same way as at in-person events. So, rather than trying to replicate what we do at in-person events in a digital environment, we have to create unique digital experiences and select just the right technology to operate at scale when it comes to automation, nurturing, and the insights that will support investment in the relationship with buyers.

If you do content marketing well, people will want to come to you based on what you share. You will not have to chase after them. I always say it’s like the difference between hunting and farming. With hunting, you run after what you want, but the target is likely to turn around and run just as fast in the opposite direction. No one likes being chased. As a farmer, you grow something that is beautiful and looks and smells delicious. People come to see what it is and discover that they might be interested in buying some of it. It starts withlistening, so that you know what to seed where and when, giving people the opportunity to discover, explore, and approach you when they are ready. You have to nurture people at their own pace, making sure to serve them the right content at the right time on their journey.

Has content marketing changed, then?

Yes. I think the trend goes toward engaging in communities that also help you shift more toward user-generated content. Peer-to-peer content is always relevant, and what does not feel like marketing can often be the best marketing content. We still see a lot of content that is inside-out: Vendors talk about themselves, their products, what they want everyone to read about. We need to invest more at the top of the funnel—in the kind of content that makes people want to explore further until they are ready to educate themselves on our

It can now take as many as sixty to eighty touch points to complete a buyer's journey for a larger deal, and that does not even include website visits.

products and solutions. We need more “snackable” content in digital formats, such as videos and infographics that are easy to consume.

This approach is important, too, because we are investing more in digital events. The attention span is different from an in-person event, and it’s much easier for people to leave because they did not invest anything in travel and can leave without being noticed. In our webinars, we are forced to have better speakers, shorter presentations, and a greater focus on interactivity. We have to win customers every minute of the event because we do not have them in a physical location that takes effort to leave. The transition to working remotely has definitely raised the bar for what we need to deliver to customers.

I think that transformational marketing is sometimes hindered by how we measure ourselves and how we set our key performance indicators. In customer-driven marketing, it’s much more difficult to tie every touch point to a lead or an opportunity, but that’s also why we are investing in data and analytics. That said, buyers make a significant part of the journey—upwards of 70 percent—on their own before they even talk to us. Thus, we have to invest more in digital, social, and influencer marketing. This also means that the start of a journey is not necessarily an event; more likely, it is a digital touch point that may be an influencer piece or just someone in your network who shares something interesting. The top of the funnel is broader and more chaotic because people can jump in at any point and the journey can take so many different directions. How quickly customers convert depends on their readiness when they jumped in but also how well you are able to meet them where they are with valuable information.

To influence them, we can increase the number of possible touch points and make them as high quality as possible. We cannot just repeat the same information over and over again across the customer’s many touch points. Everyone of these many

touch points is a risk that you will lose a potential customer, so content must be specific and interesting enough to make the customer want to take the next step. This is a different game, and the quality standard is much higher.

What do you see as the future for field marketing, and what skills will be needed?

The most important skill marketers need to develop involves data and analytics—still rather rare skills among marketers. Marketing is a marriage of science and art, with most marketers traditionally leaning heavily on the artistic side. Now, we need marketers who can function as data scientists, interpreting big data and turning insights into fuel for the marketing machine. Marketers need to understand the mechanics behind big data and analytics so that they can put together the right mix of content at the right time and continually optimize their outreach based on what is happening in their markets. Everything happens in real time, and we need to increase our skill set and empower the people who are closest to the customers and the market, making sure that they can react quickly to what is happening.

Partner and co-marketing will become more important in the informal communities and networks that emerge after the pandemic. The lines between organizations blur when people come together based on shared goals and a shared purpose. This is the power of communities: They bring people together who have a shared interest in something, regardless of where they fall within an organization. It’s less an “us versus them” or siloed approach to the mix of people you put together. The task of any organization is to be clear with what it wants to accomplish, because that clarity helps attract the right people. The winners of

Inbound marketing is a different game, with higher quality standards. Rather than sending customers message after message, every touch point now has to be specific and interesting. Every one of these many, many touch points has the potential to be your weakest link.

Malin Liden,

Vice President & Head of Strategic Programs, Global Field Marketing, SAP

tomorrow are those who are going to create environments that people want to be part of—being magnets for people who want to become part of their ecosystem.

In the future, I think we will keep investing in digital approaches rather than go back to the big events of the past. But we have to replace the intimacy lost in digital formats by keeping groups smaller and adding breakout environments for different areas and interests. In a community that I run, I’ve seen subcommunities emerge, and people freely move between areas based on current interest. A community is sustainable only if it keeps evolving and offering enough interesting topics, projects, and initiatives for people to come together around. It comes down to creating platforms that enable people to have a bigger impact together than they could on their own.

People have low tolerance for poor experiences, so we have to be even more diligent, in terms not only of the content but also of the overall experience. I think that augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will change the game, enriching digital content experiences. Staying close to customers, picking up on early cues, and responding to those cues will remain key, however, and that does not necessarily take a lot of fancy technology to get started with.

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

The field marketing group at AlgoSec is responsible for lead generation, and we relied heavily on face-to-face communication. Before the shift toward working remotely, regional events and big trade shows were crucial for lead generation.

The first week or two of the transition was a whirlwind of navigating canceled events—figuring out what people were doing and regrouping. Net new leads are crucial, so we decided to go to the RSA Cybersecurity Conference in February 2020 as a sponsor. Big sponsors such as AT&T and IBM had already pulled out, but we decided to go because it was such a huge investment for us. It turned out to be a good decision because we ended up with a lot of leads for our sales development representatives to work with while we regrouped.

While we had money coming back from cancelled events, we still needed to generate new high-quality leads for our pipeline. Given the economic uncertainty of the pandemic, we also worked to do more with a reduced budget while transitioning to virtual events. So, we looked at all the core third-party vendors in our space and emphasized the quality of leads in our decision-making process. We selected only those vendors that offered lead guarantees.

Tanya Mackenzie is a results-oriented marketing pro with 20 years of experience at fast-growing technology companies. Tanya’s experience spans marketing practices, including field marketing, marketing operations, channel marketing, executive events, account-based marketing, digital campaigns, database management, and marketing automation. She is passionate about supporting the salespeople who depend on these programs for demand generation, awareness building, and ongoing customer relations.

Tanya Mackenzie,

Director of Field Marketing,
AlgoSec

So far, this approach has worked well. It has forced us to expand our relationships with key vendors that are vital in helping us reach our marketing qualified lead goals. Face-to-face leads are expensive, especially the large trade shows. They are also more time consuming, so you have little time to focus on other areas. We are now getting fewer leads, but with the focus on quality, we have higher conversion rates. For this reason, I view this transition time as an opportunity for growth for myself and my team.

In what ways have roundtables been effective?

Our roundtables are small, intimate groups in which we focus on a topic and bring in executive speakers to provide thought leadership information. People attend because a topic interests them and because leading experts provide
the information.

I also think that we will see greater focus on ABM and personalized marketing within personas as a way to get more with less.

For example, microsegmentation is popular in security right now because signing in remotely poses additional security challenges and concerns. So, experts come prepared to discuss how they have dealt with remote sign-in during the pandemic, how they are addressing policy management requests, and so forth. The roundtable becomes a way to share information across the industry.

Most companies expect more from their teams right now, so people want tips and tricks from experts and others in their industry. In some cases, experts may be from competing companies but in different regions. In other cases, experts may be people who are from outside the industry but are interested in the topic. They know ahead of time who is going to be on the call. This sort of activity wasn’t as popular before COVID-19.

Similarly, we hosted our customer advisory board (CAB) virtually. At our annual AlgoSummit, we would do our CAB and certification training as side activities over a full week. This year, we are separating them, streamlining content, and conducting them virtually. We invested in a platform and will ensure that the registration process is exciting. We want our participants to know that these are top-notch events that we have put a lot of thought into, not just a Zoom-based Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. The virtual events are not perfect, but people are embracing them. So, we need to make them as professional as possible and keep people engaged so they get value out of the content.

What do you see in the future for event marketing?

Overall, I think that field marketing will continue to be critical because we are so close to sales and we help build the pipeline. In the past, field marketing relied heavily on live events, the goal being to get “face-to-face” with prospects and customers. We have been forced to adjust, and now “demand generation” more accurately reflects what we do.

In-person events tend to be extremely expensive, and they do not provide uniformly high value. Comparatively, digital event leads have been less expensive. By insisting on lead guarantees generated by third parties, you have a winning combination: fewer, high-quality, cost-effective leads with higher conversion rates.

Tanya Mackenzie,

Director of Field Marketing, AlgoSec

In terms of skill sets, field marketers need to understand virtual platforms, registration platforms, and tips for keeping participants engaged in a virtual setting. I also think that we will see greater focus on account-based marketing (ABM) and personalized messaging within personas as a way to get more with less. We tend to create more generalized messages when we get busy. Now is the time to do things right and take advantage of, for example, getting 10 percent more engagement on an email.

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

I work on the business-to-business side of FICO, the data and analytics technology company best known for the FICO credit score. I focus on field marketing of our risk management (RM) solutions and getting our sales and marketing teams in front of clients at industry events. I also do a lot of work with partners and partner marketing, which has been a great way for us to get our story out there. I was already doing a lot of digital demand generation, which can be challenging from a return-on-investment (ROI) perspective. I’m responsible for putting on field marketing events, including tradeshows and events at which we are presenters.

In what ways has COVID-19 changed field marketing?

Our teams already worked from home full time, so we have not dealt with issues that other companies have faced on that front. One change is that field marketing owns more of the customer journey than before. Traditionally, marketing and field marketing own the first half of the buyer journey: product education, the value story, and everything else through creating the events. Sales then engages with clients at the events and continues through the second half of the journey with them.

Andy Skillen is a marketing leader who has more than 20 years of experience in sales, presales, and technical support in multinational technology companies. Andy is an expert in B2B thought leadership and digital marketing and was a 2007 finalist for the Marketing Award for Excellence (MAX) award.

Andy Skillen,

Director of Field Marketing,
FICO

What has changed since the pandemic is that field marketing is creating not just the event space but also the virtual connection between sales and clients through virtual happy hours (or ice-cream socials) and roundtables. For the virtual happy hours, we use any kind of customer success as a reason to celebrate. Before the event, we send out gift certificates, which generates interest—as in, “what are these guys doing that they’re inviting me to a virtual happy hour?” We’ve even hired professional musicians to perform at these events. What’s interesting to me as a marketing person is that we are seeing much higher responses and registrations than with similar in-person events.

We have also put together forty or fifty webinars about resiliency to help clients think about how they are going to get through the pandemic and its resulting economic challenges. Where we have seen some great success is what I’m calling virtual roundtables. I know that those are nothing new, but what is different is that we are recognizing that the voice of the client is more important than ever because everybody is going through profound changes, pressures, and challenges with their business.

So, for these virtual roundtables, we invite a particular client and set the stage to discuss a particular challenge, such as fraud or collection issues. The thought leadership can come from anywhere; it can be thought leadership that we have developed or developed with a partner. We start by presenting industry data tailored to the client. Then, we go into the “voice of the client,” where we seek to understand the client’s situation, problems, and needs. This, to me, is where the magic in these virtual roundtables really happens. You have to be prepared so that you do not rush through it but instead wait for whoever is going to be the thought leader on the client side.

Companies are experiencing incredible ROI by eliminating travel and events and doing more digitally. It is clear that even when we can travel more freely, marketing is going to be far more involved in thought leadership, social aspects, and actual selling than before.

The resulting insight is astounding. In particular, it has helped us understand how to improve our go-to-market tactics and adapt our messaging in the new environment. By helping sales bridge the gap through virtual roundtables, marketing now owns more like two-thirds of the buyer journey. I take the buyer journey map to the point of major decision-making. Then, I layer in the client’s perspective. In doing so, marketing now sees clients all the way through to the “commit to solution” stage.

How do you see sales changing?

Given the new pressures COVID-19 has created, we have not only had to “fail fast” but “succeed faster.” From a company perspective, I think that the ROI will come from going more digital and from saving money on travel and entertainment. We can do many more virtual events than physical events and at a much lower cost. I think that sales will ultimately get back to doing what sales does best: using relationships to move deals forward. I think that marketing will continue to be more engaged with sales and clients.

Previously, “human marketing” was more a concept than a reality. With marketing and sales now engaging socially with clients, we will apply more aspects of human marketing moving forward. The virtual social interaction and engagement are really no different than a salesperson sitting in a bar with a client, only now marketing is listening in on the conversations.

The resulting insight is astounding. In particular, it has helped us understand how to improve our go-to-market tactics and adapt our messaging in the new environment. By helping sales bridge the gap through virtual roundtables, marketing now owns more like two-thirds of the buyer journey. I take the buyer journey map to the point of major decision-making. Then, I layer in the client’s perspective. In doing so, marketing now sees clients all the way through to the “commit to solution” stage.

How do you see sales changing?

Given the new pressures COVID-19 has created, we have not only had to “fail fast” but “succeed faster.” From a company perspective, I think that the ROI will come from going more digital and from saving money on travel and entertainment. We can do many more virtual events than physical events and at a much lower cost. I think that sales will ultimately get back to doing what sales does best: using relationships to move deals forward. I think that marketing will continue to be more engaged with sales and clients.

Previously, “human marketing” was more a concept than a reality. With marketing and sales now engaging socially with clients, we will apply more aspects of human marketing moving forward. The virtual social interaction and engagement are really no different than a salesperson sitting in a bar with a client, only now marketing is listening in on the conversations.

Andy Skillen,

Director of Field Marketing, FICO

Where does field marketing go from here, and what changes do you see coming?

I feel like we are still in the first stages of what is going to be an intense change in how we all do business. We have all been playing with digital marketing for a while now, but we really need vendors that can step up and ensure better results than they have in the past because our marketing dollars are more precious than ever. Cost per lead per vendor is no longer a theoretical conversation. We can no longer engage in all these different activities with all these different vendors. The cost per lead can vary greatly from vendor to vendor—anywhere from $20 to $300 per lead. I now have to narrow it down and be able to justify programs against other field marketers or other marketing priorities. With tighter marketing budgets, we are either going to need guarantees or see a lot more rank ordering based on digital vendors’ effectiveness. There will be less willingness to work with vendors that do not produce results.

In the postpandemic world, RM will be an even bigger issue. Everybody is now working from home, and we are seeing more paranoia than ever about fraud. People need to be cognizant of the risks, especially in this dramatic shift to digital and virtual environments. I think that the companies that were already moving toward digital are going to see the fruits of their efforts, but those who resisted moving to digital are really going to be at a disadvantage over the next year and in for a tough time in terms of economic recovery.

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

GTT is a challenger brand in the enterprise networking market, and we compete against the former monopolies and major incumbents. Our main goal is to gain market share, and our field marketing program is dedicated to supporting this goal. In our Americas Division, we live by the mantra that everyone in the organization is either in sales or sales support roles. My field marketing team is closely aligned with our enterprise sales teams, and our goal is to generate appointments and pipeline opportunities with new prospects.

We focused on targeted, smaller, intimate local events as one of our main field marketing tactics. We used an account-based marketing (ABM) approach and have predetermined target prospects in each of our markets. We found smaller, targeted events to be the most productive for generating follow-up appointments and set measurable objectives for every event.

Our target prospects are IT leaders, decision makers, and influencers. Leaders, C suite executives, and other decision makers and influencers in our space have seen just about every type of tactic and event from our competitors. So, creating unique experiences to break through the clutter, engage our target prospects, and get them out of their offices has been a main focus. To accomplish our aim, we

With 20 years of experience, Erik Hawkins is an accomplished marketing leader with extensive experience managing field marketing programs; leading and developing teams; collaborating cross-functionally; creating, executing, and measuring targeted marketing programs; creating compelling content; and supporting field sales and channel sales teams.

Erik Hawkins,

Field Marketing Director
(North America), GTT

used a combination of our own intimate, high-end hospitality and networking events and partnering with and sponsoring third-party technology and chief information officer events.

In addition to generating new prospect appointments and pipelines, another field marketing goal was pipeline acceleration. Software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) is one of the hottest topics in enterprise networking today, and GTT is a leading SD-WAN provider. SD-WAN and other enterprise networking services can involve long buying and sales cycles driven by sales negotiation as well as the technical specifications and network design of dozens or even hundreds of customer sites. So, in addition to prospect-focused field marketing, we also typically focused on intimate and unique experiences that targeted midlevel to bottom-of-the-funnel “prospect nurture” pipeline acceleration.

In what ways has COVID-19 changed field marketing?

Our goal has been to develop and execute more webinars and other digital tactics to complement live events. In fact, before the pandemic, our field marketing tactics consisted primarily of live events. As a result of The pandemic necessitated a shift to remote work, and we quickly pivoted to developing and implementing webinar series and exploring other tactics we could deploy quickly in the absence of live events.

Part of our success in pivoting away from a focus on live events was embracing a growth hacker mentality—effectively, a mindset focused on developing and implementing creative and innovative marketing tactics during the pandemic to continue to fill sales funnels.

Another interesting dynamic in the enterprise networking space is that global use of data networks has surged during the pandemic. Traffic across our internet network increased by 30 percent during the first month of the pandemic—a growth rate typically experienced over the course of an entire year rather than a few weeks. As a result, we are seeing continued strong demand for enterprise communications services. So, we have worked hard to create and implement a new tactical marketing playbook on the fly that we could quickly deploy. I think that this type of a scrappy “growth hacker” approach can be an effective marketing model for this time.

Webinars

Webinars have become central assets that we can quickly deploy. We developed and executed two initial second-quarter webinar series focused on SD-WAN: one prospect-focused series to support our direct sales teams and a channel agent–focused series to support our national channel partner program. We did this on the fly, developing the content for each webinar while simultaneously developing and executing the webinar marketing plan.

Creating and delivering compelling content are important in webinar execution, so we worked hard to develop educational and informational content focused on thought leadership as a trusted expert for those seeking SD-WAN services. We began with a clear title and abstract, including the main takeaways we wanted our audience to leave with, and built the entire webinar content around them.

In our webinar messaging, it was important to show empathy to the challenging and uncertain times we are all living and working in. Our goal was to acknowledge the current situation up front and tie in relevant verticals or use

Going forward, as we move to a more integrated field marketing model, we will develop live events along with virtual and digital tactics that effectively keep prospects moving through the funnel.

cases, such as the health care vertical and business continuity, in keeping remote workforces up and running. We also completely scripted the open and close and made the webinar interactive between our host and presenters so that it sounds like a podcast.

To pull off eight webinars in two months, we did everything ourselves, saving time and expense. We wrote all our own webinar content and all our scripts, created our webinar presentation templates, and edited the recordings to create replay assets.

In terms of webinar analytics, we focused on three main measurements: registration generation, attendee yield, and whether attendees stay for the duration of the webinar? We closely measured and assessed these metrics for each webinar to learn and improve in subsequent webinars.

Strategic partner and comarketing

We also partnered with our SD-WAN strategic partners and featured one of them in each of the webinars. In addition to partnering on our second-quarter webinar series, we are working with our strategic partners on other comarketing opportunities, including additional webinars, solution briefs, case studies, blogs, and content syndication.

Quick-hit content

We use quick-hit content to generate interest via social shares and earned media. GTT owns one of the top global IP networks, so we have considerable potential for earned media from business interest media articles on topics such as

telecom essential services, “how the internet really works,” and “how tier 1 internet service providers continually work together to boost internet capacity” to ensure business continuity. Earned media stories help generate brand awareness.

Additional tactics we have used include creating more blog posts and repurposing our own content, such as white papers, with new graphic/headlines that are more relevant for the current market conditions.

We have also created sizzle reels—short, flashy product videos that we can embed in other content.

Content

We are expanding our content library to develop additional content assets, including blogs, videos, infographics, white papers, and repurposed content from recent quarters. For example, we will re-create a graphic, headline, or quote from a previous asset to make the content asset more relevant to today’s environment. The idea is to have more assets available for tactical use when we are back
to “normal.”.

Behind-the-scenes projects

One final tactic is taking advantage of the break from live events and travel to work on projects we did not have time to do before, including enhancements to our website and cleaning up our marketing databases. The idea is to get everything honed and efficient so that when our field marketing engine is running again at full throttle in a postpandemic environment, we’ll be ready.

Cut through the clutter by creating compelling, educational, and informational thought leadership content (not too salesy) that focuses on your target audience and market.

Where does field marketing go from here?

We will ride the momentum we have achieved over the past few months. Live local, intimate, targeted events will continue to be successful tactics for us, but they will become just one of many tactics we use.

We will continue to develop and implement new webinars, content, and content marketing tactics. In addition, we plan to integrate webinars and virtual events into our overall field marketing events plan when we resume live events. More broadly, I envision successful field marketing programs implementing a fully integrated plan that encompasses live events, webinars, content marketing, and digital marketing. That will be our field marketing strategic vision.

As much as you want to get to know the enterprises you are targeting, enterprises want to know if you are credible, whether you can do what you say you can do and whether they would be comfortable meeting with you for the first time. In preparation for live events and initial meetings, we spend considerable time preparing. Our key challenges are figuring out how to build premeeting rapport through digital marketing, have productive initial meetings, and then flow down our normal sales cycle process virtually.

Erik Hawkins,

Field Marketing Director (North America), GTT

One interesting dynamic we are considering is how virtual-only interactions will affect our pipeline. The sales cycle to the enterprise segment typically involves a lot of interactions, face-to-face meetings, and follow-ups.

We spend a lot of time planning for and thinking about face-to-face communication with prospects. At events, we want prospects to get to know us just as much as we are getting to know them. We don’t have the brand recognition that our incumbent competitors do, so it’s particularly important that prospects come away from events and interactions feeling that we are credible and that they would take a follow-up meeting with us.

So, we spend a lot of time in premeetings with our enterprise salespeople before every event so that we can effectively network and build relationships at events, no matter how seasoned the salespeople are. Similarly, we work with them to prepare for discovery meetings, follow-up meetings, and other face-to-face meetings our sales team has with prospects. So, we will need to find ways to achieve the same effectiveness in virtual or semivirtual environments as in live events.

Going forward, as we move to a more integrated field marketing model, we will develop live events along with virtual and digital tactics that effectively keep prospects moving through the funnel. Developing a more integrated field marketing model was a goal before the pandemic, and we plan to use what we have learned over the past few months to make it happen.

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

We had success and growth in our field marketing program that we were excited about. We maintained a full mix of online and live marketing programs, but we invested a lot of time and money in live events such as trade shows and road shows. We worked closely with the sales department to determine which events to attend, objectives, talking points, target contacts, and follow-up sales scripts. We have a formula we use for events and have developed a blog series about getting noticed at events without spending a ton of money or having a 50’ × 50’ booth space. Needless to say, we put this blog series on hold.

Earlier this year, we started producing road show events in partnership with Forrester. These events are important because they can potentially get us in front of larger audiences than is possible with other events—and with more focus. At the first event in early March 2020, about 50 people turned out, which was great. At the second event, just a week later, cities had begun to shut down and we had just six people.

Jennifer McAdams is an accomplished marketing leader with 25 years of experience, including 8 years at the executive leadership level. Jennifer focuses on working across organizations to design and deliver measurable marketing campaigns, driving integrated marketing programs to support sales and business objectives, and overseeing all elements of marketing strategy and execution.

Jennifer McAdams,

Vice President, Demand Generation and Field Marketing, Progress

How have your marketing efforts shifted during
the pandemic?

The biggest shift is that we have moved from in-person to virtual events. For example, we have moved our road show online, using on-demand and live events. We aim to cover six products, including two that are installed-base plays, and we are trying to upsell, cross-sell, and keep the audience engaged. Four are full demand-generation products for which we hope to acquire new logos. For the installed-base events, we know this audience; those people want to engage with us, so we ran those events live. For the demand-generation products, we want as many eyes on the content as possible, so we ran those on-demand events as evergreen content. For the on-demand environment, we used our web content management system, Sitefinity. I was proud of how quickly our team pivoted and the event environment they built, which includes social sharing, Q&A capabilities, and more. We have also started hosting live events.

We have increased third-party opportunities, as well. For example, before the pandemic, we produced about one webinar per month per product together with a mix of in-person events. That has changed. Now, we have increased our paid programs and partnerships to further syndicate content or reach specific personas. We have also increased the number of third-party–sponsored events we participate in, including some of the trade shows we have reinvented as online events.

We maintained a full mix of online and live marketing programs, but we invested a lot of time and money in live events such as trade shows and road shows.

What have you observed as a result of these changes?

T he information technology (IT) audience is loyal and continues to consume content, even though IT people are busy keeping the infrastructure running to meet the sharply increased demand for remote work. They may not show up at live webinars in the numbers they were before, but blog traffic has increased, and there has been strong uptake of on-demand events, both of which indicate that IT pros are still trying to educate themselves despite workloads and busy schedules.

It has also become clear that connecting with a lead now requires much more work—maybe even five times as many outreach attempts as before COVID-19. This increase is probably a function of several factors, such as people being distracted, adjusting to new priorities, and getting used to working from home. To combat this shift, we started using an artificial intelligence (AI)–based gifting platform that researches the social profiles of the person we are trying to contact so that we can tailor communications to his or her interests. For example, if David Smith is a big New York Yankees fan, we may offer a Yankees sweatshirt in exchange for booking an appointment. This solution is actually pretty elegant and does not require us to buy a bunch of sweatshirts we hope people will like.

We are also finding that hero stories are helping us reduce the number of contacts needed to connect with a lead. Some of our products enable people to work from home, so we are hearing from a variety of new and existing customers. From these communications, we are developing hero stories about how our products are solving problems for companies and individuals alike. This work helps us communicate that we understand the many challenges to adapting to working remotely and have ways to help.

What does field marketing go from here, and what changes do you see coming?

I think field marketing will continue to be important for several reasons. The campaign managers and regional teams in the larger field marketing organization work directly with the sales team and are, therefore, marketing’s closest point to sales. They will always be critical because they speak sales as well as marketing. They are the ones who translate what the sales team is asking for into programs that will engage the audience. We are also seeing a lot more interest in localization from our field teams. If you only have a minute to grab someone in a digital ad or social post, you have to meet local language and cultural expectations or risk losing that person. Field marketers are essential to understanding and meeting these needs.

Additionally, I think field marketers will take the opportunity to sharpen and expand their areas of expertise—digital, partner, events—and become more generally versed. Event marketers are already taking courses or getting certified in digital marketing so that they can develop and manage our webinars and virtual events. They are then bringing that expertise back to their partner-marketing counterparts to share lessons learned. We are all trying to figure this out together. In doing so, field marketers are becoming both generalists and experts across the three marketing categories.

Jennifer McAdams,

Vice President, Demand Generation and Field Marketing, Progress

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

I started with Sprinklr in early January, so I was just starting in my role and working on expanding my team. The company is about ten years old: It is in that unicorn phase, trying to scale up. After being at Microsoft for several years, I was brought in to help take the company to the next level. Initially, I focused on a few activities:

Nicole Summitt has twenty-five years of experience in advertising and marketing and a proven track record of working in highly complex organizations and entrepreneurial, fast-moving environments. A creative, goal-oriented, people-first leader, she is passionate about blazing new trails and tackling the impossible. Nicole focuses on strategic, practical guidance that drives relationships and business impact through connected marketing engagements, digital experiences, and events.

Nicole Summitt,

Vice President, Marketing, Sprinklr

Build up a field marketing organization worldwide, including developing multiple event types and driving consistency and compliance to the brand across local markets.

Develop local lead programs by understanding differences in markets and getting to know customer nuances.

Roughly 70 percent of what we planned was in-person events and driven by face-to-face customer engagement.

What were your biggest revelations after we all started working remotely?

From a marketing plan perspective, we experienced a lot of changes. We were supposed to do an event in Washington, DC, in March. A week before the event,

one of the speakers canceled because of a travel ban. Then, another speaker pulled out . . . and then another. Sprinklr-led events were the first to be paused, followed by third-party–sponsored events, including more than fifteen immediate events that we were planning to do. We had to figure out ways to move forward and maintain momentum despite all the cancelations. We had to pause and recognize what was going on, turn the ship in a different direction, and change the strategy.

A small, localized, highly curated digital event that focuses on a specific topic creates a sense of community. Most importantly, customers and prospects are bringing their own content to the program, and we are giving them a platform to share their insights, ask each other questions, and share stories.

During the transition, I regret not responding sooner to help people in our global offices when restrictions started to take shape. We have offices in Singapore, Japan, China, and other parts of the world that pandemic-created closures significantly affected. Ideally, I would have stepped in sooner to help them think about their new environment and reshape their local marketing efforts. That was a huge lesson learned: If you are operating in multiple geographies, tune in and respond to local conditions as quickly as possible to help the company adjust and take advantage of early lessons learned worldwide.

Keep listening to your customers, and respond rapidly to what they want. In this way, you can share relevant content, help customers talk to each other, and respond quickly to market changes.

We are a company focused on listening, so we used our marketing channels to encourage others to listen on social media channels for early indicators of what was happening in different industries. For March and part of April, we changed our content to focus on how the whole world was feeling and addressing issues such as communicating with customers, being efficient in operations, and working remotely.

Our company was quick to implement cost-cutting measures, including sweeping pauses to all paid marketing. From there, we had to make digital content a larger part of our marketing plan. We then faced challenges trying to stand out and build community online. Forums, for example, provide a different experience and enable us to communicate directly with customers. Typically, smaller events, such as group sessions or dinners, provide opportunities to share content, but the digital sessions also provided just the right environment for natural networking to occur. We continue to have webinars that we want to blast to the masses, but we also work on localized, customized events on a specific topic. In these events, we do not provide much content; rather, we invite customers to come forward and share insights, stories, and conversations with each other.

Where does field marketing go from here, and what changes do you see coming?

The basic framework will still include geography-based field marketers for localization needs, corporate-led marketing programs that scale, and coordinated campaigns to rally around.

This situation has really highlighted the fact that we communicate on social channels. A bigger shift in marketing is the need to listen and respond to customers in the channel they prefer. Getting customer care right (especially online) is becoming significantly more important.

I also see the need for community environments that address the nuances of local markets, including understanding how local customers respond to the market, how they behave, and what does and does not work. We have to bring in relevant customer stories and find balance between building relationships locally and at scale. Twenty roundtables take a lot more time and resources than one webinar to a broader audience.

We will also continue to adjust our messaging to ensure that assets resonate. Everybody has heightened emotions, and we have to adapt to that. For example, rather than using visuals of big groups of people, we are rethinking our branding to combine emotion and environment. We don’t want to appear deaf to the world around us.

Nicole Summitt,

Vice President, Marketing, Sprinklr

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

In field marketing, we probably spent 80 percent of our time on events and 20 percent on targeted digital activity. We found that some types of events worked better than others. For example, industry events were good for brand awareness and for refreshing our database with new contacts. I read somewhere that cybersecurity practitioners change jobs every three years; industry events were great for keeping our database current. We would then go deeper into the funnel, conducting Cybereason-run events, road show events, and one-off events such as a whiskey tasting for clients in the spirits industry. We also partnered with our channel companies; we would go to them or they would come to us to design events. The order of events was important for moving people through the funnel, and we built events to align with the customer journey.

In hindsight, I think we focused too much on events. Being forced to go digital has enabled us to do more of what we knew was needed: be more strategic and focus more account-based marketing (ABM), not just the “rinse and repeat” of event marketing. We had already started contributing to ABM and sales efforts, but the transition made us reevaluate how we can most effectively help the sales team be strategic.

A seasoned marketing professional, Adam Kerrigan focuses on regional pipeline generation and acceleration. Following seven years with Abcam, he became CyberArk’s first field marketer, supporting more than 25 field sales staff. At Cybereason, Adam now leads demand generation for the Americas and has established new growth platforms and thought-leadership programs as well as devised numerous digital and event series.

Adam Kerrigan,

Director of Americas Demand Marketing, Cybereason

What solutions have you implemented to replace
in-person events?

There was a two-week period where frustrations were high because we were more prepared for 2020 than we had been in previous years. Many people’s first reaction was to run webinars in place of in-person events. Traditional webinars were still quite successful for us, with 500 to 600 people attending, but we knew we needed an additional format.

We have worked hard to replace the face-to-face communications of an intimate whiskey-tasting event or a steak dinner with smaller virtual events. We came up with a coffee break series that’s city or territory specific. It is more conversational than large events, with maybe twenty to thirty people attending. Through these events, we could reach out to a targeted account list in a particular area while introducing them to their local sales unit.

We haven’t encountered much concern over potential competitors attending the same digital events. We have found that there’s still a sense of camaraderie among those in the cybersecurity industry because we all have the same goal: to secure our businesses. Sometimes, people do need to protect the confidentiality of those clients they work with, but that information often comes further down in the sales cycle.

How have you created interactivity in your events?

One of the biggest challenges in these smaller events was promoting interactivity. We ran a series of events in April, May, and June, for example, and the first one was not interactive. The likely reason was that we had not prepared the sales team on the format, and they came into the event thinking

We moved our

larger in-person events online quickly, but replacing the intimacy of smaller, in-person events with small virtual events that allow for more informal communications and networking was a challenge.

it was more like a webinar. We also did not have the right staff on the call or on camera, which we think would have made attendees more comfortable.

For our May event, we made sure that we had more Cybereason staff on camera prompting questions. We realized that we had to be more conversational as hosts to encourage our attendees to do the same.

For our June event, we tried getting current customers to join the calls and engage in the conversation. We found that having non-Cybereason staff asking questions helped open the conversation a bit.

I think that the conversational tone we used in the invitations also helped interactivity. In reminder emails, we mentioned weighty topics and questions that set the stage for a conversation rather than a presentation.

In hindsight, I think we focused too much on events. Being forced to go digital has enabled us to do more of what we knew was needed: be more strategic and focus more on ABM.

What are some unexpected benefits of and lessons from going digital?

I would not necessarily say that engagement has increased, but we are close to being back to where we were before COVID-19. We have been able to reestablish our lead flows, opportunity numbers, qualifying opportunities, and the like. We have also increased our target account work and vertical messaging. These have always been in place, but I think that we focus on them more now.

Adam Kerrigan,

Director of Americas Demand Marketing, Cybereason

The perception of field marketing has changed a bit. We are no longer just event marketers; rather, we are viewed more as strategic partners in the sales cycle. We are now working with sales to gather market intelligence or information specific to target accounts. We are not just generating leads but also helping qualify opportunities.

From a budget perspective, an unexpected consequence of COVID-19 may be a significant drop in cost per lead and cost per opp. The pricey in-person industry events have transitioned to cheaper virtual formats or been canceled entirely. Event providers may have a tough time recouping these sales if vendors adapt well to less expensive virtual and ABM lead-generation methods.

We also need to market to prospects and customers in the way they want to be reached. However, doing this work well may take months or years because customers are also still finding their way in the new world. Big events may come back, but marketing will require sophisticated account-based nurturing. This approach has been on every marketer’s wish list, but it’s going to take more people on the front end, require automation, and take longer.

What was it like in marketing before COVID-19?

Our team handles account-based marketing (ABM) for 300 of our top accounts. We are field marketing, yes, but we focus on ABM. Before working remotely, we were planning for and moving ahead with in-person events all over the world. Most of our events were specific to an individual account, often multi day programs in which we bring experts to the customer for hands-on workshops and presentations of customer success stories.

Events accomplished two goals: creating awareness by supporting the platform within individual accounts and creating executive-level relationships with customers. I think that partnering with customers differentiates ABM from field marketing: We want to expand customers’ opportunities and enable them to be part of what is possible. These goals are easier to achieve when you have an internal spokesperson who supports what you are promoting and can speak to what he or she has seen.

A fifteen-year veteran of sales and marketing, Melissa Alonso drives innovation and growth by delivering top-performing, individualized client service that translates customer needs into prosperous outcomes. With a passion for customer success and creative event marketing, Melissa fosters new relationships and expands business opportunities through customer awareness and engagement programs. She is a proven leader in field, digital, and strategic marketing around the globe.

Melissa Alonso,

Director, Global Account-Based Marketing, Qlik

How did these customer-focused events translate to virtual events?

As far as creating awareness by supporting the platform within individual accounts, we created a program called the Virtual Passport, which is a multievent webinar series that we run in collaboration with the customer that focuses on the customer’s success stories across different use cases—technical, business, leadership, and so on. The passport is an engagement program for driving adoption, familiarizing people with what we do, and empowering them to do more. We spread content from a quick guide out over six to eight weeks, with attendees receiving a passport cover or a luggage tag or some piece of swag that they would have received at an in-person event. Registration is based on a single email invitation that includes the series of events, so people can choose what they want to participate in with less intrusion.

I think the program is a bit different because attendees still get valuable information and feel that they are part of something. The passport also creates continuity between events—a flow of learning opportunities rather than single topics that may or may not be relevant depending on participants’ job function or point in their career. Attendees become part of a larger conversation, jump in when topics are relevant to them, and then become internal champions in their own success stories.

The webinars themselves are still much like presentations, with speakers and Q&A sessions, but they are shorter snippets that are more consumable and available regardless of time zone. We use a tool called Follow, which is an interactive landing page that drives all the content—registration, postevent assets, and so forth—and makes them trackable. Moving forward, I think the

People do not want aggressive sales techniques where they fill out a form to receive gated content, and then receive 14 phone calls and emails. They want to go at their own pace and contact you when they are ready to have a conversation.

Companies love the customization that ABM offers. They really appreciate that you will create a program to help their employees get the most out of your platform.

initial touch point and trackable assets are important. Someone who has looked at 15 different assets could be your 1 person out of 500 who is raising a hand to be your next champion and use case.

Finally, as far as helping create executive-level relationships, we devised other, more intimate events, as well, such as virtual wine tastings or coffee conversations, that aim to be personal but hit the masses. These are not

presentations but rather more like listening events for us. People seem open to new kinds of communications, and these are a fun way to extend what we had previously done. Getting people to speak up about what they need is a different challenge than driving awareness and adoption. These smaller virtual events are effective in creating new executive-level relationships that attendees did not
have before.

What do you see as the future of marketing?

I think that ABM is the way to go. People love the customization and having their own marketing person. It’s not that the marketing person develops the program for clients but that we work hand in hand with clients to create opportunities from their communications and success stories.

Melissa Alonso,

Director, Global Account-Based Marketing, Qlik

Connecting customers with executives will be increasingly important, as well. For financial clients, for example, I do not hesitate to call in our chief financial officer (CFO) to talk about how he uses the platform. This approach shows confidence in our platform and makes our executives more accessible to the masses.

We also focus on data literacy with our clients to help them confidently communicate with their managers about what they see in the data. Data provides a lot of insights, but clients need to be able to back up the data.

Finally, I think that the virtual interactions have provided a positive way to bring people together globally. They provide opportunities to be more inclusive and engage with people we may not have ever met otherwise. I think it will be quite a while before we are able to have in-person events with 500 people like we had before, so we have to continue to be creative and make little changes to webinars that will improve experiences over time. With everything being trackable, as well, I think we will see greater focus on certifications.

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

Field marketing is a service team for the sales organization. We support sales’ business objectives with relevant market strategies and tactics. Before COVID-19, field marketing would work with sales teams to understand their goals and long-term plans. From those goals, we would build strategies, tactics, and key performance indicators for six-month, one-year, and three-year plans. Although we focus on long-term strategies, we remain flexible so that we can adapt to opportunities as they arise. For example, a crisis in Brazil could trigger a new opportunity in the financial services area. We had to be on top of the market. We had to be flexible and versatile enough to capture new opportunities without losing sight of the long-term plan.

The marriage between sales and marketing has had its ups and downs. Sometimes, salespeople have a narrow “what’s in it for me?” view of the marriage and assume that our job is to make events look pretty when, in fact, we are working to build a high-quality pipeline for them. At the end of the day, though, we understood that they have the tougher job: sitting in front of existing or potential customers and asking them to buy our company’s product . . . and often getting “no” for an answer. They need thick skin to do their job, and we feel their pain.

Jan Ryniewicz is a B2B marketing manager and team leader focused on marketing strategic thinking, branding, program marketing, and communications management in global companies and fast-paced multiregional environments in the IT marketplace. More than 20 years in marketing management have taught him to keep two main goals in mind: Expand the brand voice and reach, and help accelerate sales.

Jan Ryniewicz,

Head of Field Marketing, Google Cloud (Argentina, Chile, Colombia)

In what ways has COVID-19 changed field marketing?

The relationship between sales and marketing has improved. I strive to foster conversations that empower or strengthen the alliance between sales and marketing. The COVID-19 situation forced us to figure out how to survive minute to minute. There is now a growing understanding that we are in this together, working shoulder to shoulder.

As for building the marketing pipeline, the big winner here is digital transformation. Digital content is relatively new in this region (about 30 percent digital versus 70 percent live events), yet now it has to be effective across the entire funnel, from the top down to the acceleration stage. Now, every activity at each stage in the customer relationship journey must be digital.

Here in Latin America, we embrace face-to-face relationships. Within a week, however, cultural norms changed for our teams and clients. We—meaning sales, marketing, and clients—are now all in the same home-office scenario and navigating the new norms together. We now have to figure out how to build relationships digitally, as well.

We—meaning sales, marketing, and clients—are now all in the same home-office scenario and navigating the new norms together. We now have to figure out how to build relationships digitally, as well.

Marketers must make digital more personal and empathetic. They must ensure that it works at every point in the funnel—top to bottom.

How do you create engaging events, without fine wine and cuisine as part of the lure, that people are excited to attend?

Be empathetic. Clients and companies still need to run their operations. They are in a tough situation. Linking their situation with your technology or portfolio makes content insightful and more relevant to them. Marketers have to understand which triggers will appeal to potential audiences. The same empathy we’ve used to navigate our relationship with sales teams will help us build client relationships in these uncertain times.

Focus. A webinar should not attempt to capture what would be covered in a three-hour in-person event. It should be twenty to thirty minutes, like a TED Talk. That said . . .

Simulate live-event experiences. Webinars typically have a speaker followed by a Q&A session. Find platforms that enable you to simulate other parts of live events, such as breakout sessions or labs.

Invest in engagement with smaller groups. Cherry-picked, tailor-made content is important at all marketing stages. For example, consider bringing in outside thought leaders, experts, or even celebrities to reach audiences further down in the marketing funnel.

Go beyond pure technology conversations. Topics such as leadership in crisis; managing stress; and other human, social, and workplace issues add value. Last year at a data-management event, we talked about data backup and recovery for five hours. Then, I brought in a neuroscience expert to talk about how the brain processes information. Audience members were out of their comfort zones—and incredibly engaged.

Jan Ryniewicz,

Head of Field Marketing, Google Cloud (Argentina, Chile, Colombia)

Where does field marketing go from here, and what changes do you see coming?

We can assume that things are not going to be the same after the pandemic and that some things, such as big events, will continue to evolve. We need to see how people react to “becoming normal” again. I think, however, that trends toward digital content will continue, with Latin America becoming more balanced and emphasizing digital more. We are proving that digital content can work across all parts of the funnel and is more cost-effective than live events—an important point because it is unlikely that budgets will return to 2019 levels any time soon. As a result, I think field marketers will become “field/digital marketers” or maybe just “marketers.” Whatever the eventual job title, we will have to find ways to reach out to audiences differently.

What was the event marketing landscape like before working remotely?

In-person events were the core of our field marketing programs. We ran several industry trade shows and attended many other shows as a vendor, demonstrating our wares and talking shop. In the past couple of years, businesses have been forced to justify their return on investment in sending people to trade shows, and we saw a push toward quality events over the number of events. We also started hosting events ourselves, focusing on user groups, best practices, and professional development.

We tried many variations on the formula to see what worked best. Some were for our own marketing; others were in partnership with other organizations. We had an event series that garnered a cult following, so we turned it into a ten-part digital series in the United Kingdom and a five-part series in the United States. The series offered different aspects of a topic and drilled down into the funnel, as well. We were surprised at the number of RSVPs and were looking at a new platform to host the sheer number of people. We saw that going digital with events was not an impossible hill to climb.

J.P. (Jacob Porter) is a marketing professional with a background in brand management and go-to-market strategies. J.P. attributes his achievements in B2B marketing to two core ideals: value-based marketing and doing the job right. He serves as a marketing leader for the e-commerce analytics firm Edge by Ascential, where he oversees a global team of talented marketing professionals who create unique digital and offline customer journeys.

J.P. (Jacob Porter),

Global Director of Product & Field Marketing, Edge by Ascential

At the end of last year, we conducted a major survey and found that the trend was shifting back toward larger trade shows. For this year, we planned more speaking events, road show events, industry meetups, and other face-to-face events with our core customer base. We did not plan these events to be as intimate as a hosted dinner; rather, the goal was to take the best of small and large events and keep the numbers under a hundred or so. We were actually getting away from digital because it was “cold” and hard to fit into time zones.

What surprises did you encounter with the shift to
remote work?

We were well positioned when the need to go all digital arose. Customers indicated a greater willingness to work online. In fact, many of our smaller, more nimble clients—even up to the middle-tier clients—had already shifted to digital face-to-face communication. In some cases, we had not even met these clients in person until after the contract was in place. So, we were already doing a lot of these phone call webcasts in sales and support.

Even with the shift toward digital, we had to work quickly to make the entire procurement process digital or phone based. One big challenge has been re-creating the types of personal interactions you would normally have in an in-person sales process.

We came up with some amazing solutions, such as having a virtual beer with a client or leading a house tour. Working remotely has made me a bit self-conscious because I’m holed away in my kids’ toy room, but this has actually broken down some professional barriers. After all, we’re all working from our homes. People are eager to show off the weirdest thing delivered from Amazon

Digital sales can be as fast as in-person sales when your digital education efforts effectively show your customers the value

of your product.

or acknowledge the child wandering around in the background. This relaxed atmosphere helped people connect a bit more on a human level.

It will be interesting to see how renewals or upsells will be affected further on in the life cycle. These conversations tend to be warmer than new-business conversations, so they should go well.

How are you creating high-quality digital events?

You have to remember customer value—what are your customers getting out of this? No one wants to hear how much we care about them and how we are all in this together. Clients, now more than ever, want to know what value you are bringing right now that will eventually result in a positive outcome. It’s about applying a clear focus on what our offerings can do to help them. Customers gravitate toward companies that can quickly convey their message and the value they bring. It’s not just about being first to market; rather, it is about conveying that we can help you adjust your capabilities and plans through this sudden change. The conversation is not about us; it’s about our clients. Do not use a webinar to show off the latest product feature or release; instead, focus content on professional development. Lead with that.

[Customers] do not want to listen to you posturing about your product; rather, they want you to focus on their specific pain points and show them how to solve a real problem right now.

J.P. (Jacob Porter),

Global Director of Product & Field Marketing, Edge by Ascential

Where do you think event marketing is heading?

We are going to see two major shifts. First, trade shows as we knew them before the pandemic are irrecoverable. We are not going to see many large-scale events unless they are global and generate major revenue. Second, we will see the extremes become popular: big events that are few and far between or smaller get-togethers. I don’t think we will see midtier shows anymore.

Right now, digital events are about attracting large numbers of people. In time, the focus will shift to focus on attracting just the right people. Webinar platforms can accommodate 1,000 or 2,000 people, but of those, there are 20 or 30 people or a particular persona that we are interested in and want to talk to. I think there will be a swing toward exclusive digital events that help us make headway in the funnel.

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

I differentiate between central marketing and field marketing because we operate worldwide as well as across German-speaking countries and regions. Central marketing produces all the great stuff, such as white papers, press releases, blog posts, and product and solutions content. In field marketing, we ensure that the messaging is appropriate for regional and local markets. We in field marketing go one step further and tailor the marketing messaging to a customer. The pandemic has eliminated travel times, giving us additional time to make such customizations, and the outcomes reflect that. Before COVID-19, we typically divided our time between creating events and strengthening customer relationships through a more standard follow-up.

In our work, we must understand customer bottlenecks and pain points. People live in their own world and perceive reality differently. Being aware of this individuality and trying to understand what the other person's world looks like are the first steps in a common direction. To gather this information, we talk to our customers; we concentrate on listening and understanding. We strive to find the right tone, the right level of sharing, to ask the right questions and listen rather than focusing on our own offers. Sometimes, customers do not know what their problems are, so we take the time to find out together. This approach has been

Michael Hoffmann brings 22 years of experience spanning logistics, operations, sales, and marketing. He believes that marketers can design the future, that they must choose to do so actively and with reflection. Marketing can become better, regardless of its starting point. His advice to fellow marketers? The more you know, the more you will work to understand the full picture and the better the outcome will be.”

Michael Hoffmann,

Vice President of Field Operations, RELEX Solutions (Germany)

key to our success, but it has become even more important in the “new normal.” Moving these meetings online has resulted in more but shorter meetings. We feel that this new setup brings greater focus and discipline to the meetings. The interest and concentration the topics require are more intense, and the discussions go deeper. Everything needs to be understood and explained better. What a great improvement for us and the whole economy!

In what ways has COVID-19 changed field marketing?

For customers

Working remotely has changed how customers develop solutions. Instead of having a few long onsite sessions, we now have more remote sessions that are planned and realized within just sixty to ninety minutes. Customers are more focused, and the meetings are much more effective. There is constructive dialogue rather than us presenting and customers listening. So, standard approaches, offers, assumptions, and processes that we have used do not work anymore. Customers are irritated by the new economic situation, and we have to understand those irritations and the needs they create. By communicating about what has changed, we can align our customers’ needs with possible solutions.

For example, I have a long-time prospective customer who has thousands of stores in Germany. He was not likely to make new purchases any time soon, but over the years we had become friends and touched base every so often. When the pandemic hit, he told me that he was struggling to allocate toilet paper to his stores. I initially laughed, but through our conversation, I began to understand that this was a very real, very significant problem. I suggested a webinar, where we looked at his current processes and discovered the root problem. With this

People live in their own world and perceive reality differently. Being aware of this individuality and trying to understand what the other person's world looks like are the first steps in a common direction.

understanding, I was able to show him how we would have managed the situation differently and prevented the problem. He was surprised at the webinar and the outreach, and that’s exactly the point: Focus on understanding customer problems, tailoring the messaging with the right level of detail, and maintaining the relationship: The rest will take care of itself.

Recently, we applied a similar approach to establishing relationships with new customers. Tailored messaging is key, but we say that we have “looked at potential pain points in your business and think that this information or solution may be helpful.” This approach works even better now than it did before the pandemic. Before, response rates were maybe 2 to 3 percent. Now, response rates are 10 to 20 percent. Customers and potential customers alike are feeling the pressure of added pain points and bottlenecks, and they are driven to find effective solutions.

Business prospects are currently agitated by the challenges COVID-19 has created, which actually makes it easier to get them to share information about their bottlenecks and pain points. Your goal is to find where their interests and your interests intersect.

For marketers

Typically, we have weeks or even months to build a picture of complex solutions. Now, we may have sixty to ninety minutes. It’s not enough to have a good elevator pitch: You have to tailor key points to each customer. With the pandemic, we thought the crazy speed of the economic world would decrease. Physical movement—traveling and onsite meetings—decreased significantly, but the evaluation processes and decision cycles have accelerated. Now, the number of tries you get as a potential supplier are much more limited. You must come straight to what the customer wants to hear. Therefore, knowledgeable and experienced marketers with excellent communication skills are needed more
than ever.

For solutions

Every customer requirement equals an individual need. No standard solution will meet the customer’s specific need, although standards can contain many possible individual processes. Successful marketers make the effort to show the customer that they have a specific solution for his or her requirement.

To that end, we try to include speakers from outside companies in our webinars. Some of these speakers hesitate to accept because they do not want to (or cannot) share their insights with companies they perceive as competitors. The reality is, however, that people will participate in webinars to access the knowledge that we have collected for them from other customers and companies in the same market. What we are trying to do is connect people with each other and the speaker and foster open communication, such as connecting a US customer to a German customer who faces similar pain points.

Michael Hoffmann,

Vice President of Field Operations, RELEX Solutions (Germany)

Where does field marketing go from here, and what changes do you see coming?

The German market is a bit different from others, but I think the overall trend will be toward a more customer-centric, tailored marketing message. Our team already customizes messaging and channels as needed, but I see investing in knowledge, communication skills, relationships, and customization even more at the customer level becoming critical to success.

What was it like in field marketing before the shift to remote work?

As the field marketing director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) at Genesys, I manage a team of seven field marketing managers who drive marketing activities in their countries and regions. Late last year, we had planned a mix of 60 percent digital and 40 percent in-person activities throughout the EMEA countries for the year. In contrast, just five years ago, the mix was 20 percent digital and 80 percent in-person activities. Retrospectively, it was evident that the trend toward digital marketing campaigns had already been increasing. Now, with COVID-19, the marketing mix has shifted primarily to digital platforms.

As concerns about COVID-19 increased throughout February, it became clear that our in-person events would have to be postponed or cancelled. As a result, we revised our plans and budgets to minimize the impact. Shortly after that, top management asked us to revise our marketing plans even further. We reprioritized our commitments and budgets again based on the rapid changes COVID-19 was inflicting on our face-to-face marketing initiatives.

Based in Istanbul, Turkey, Atalay Aktaş is a B2B marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience in sales, presales, and technical support in multinational technology companies, including Microsoft and Genesys. He is a big believer in out-of-the-box thinking, always eager to learn from others, and open to discussing thought-provoking ideas.

Atalay Aktas,

Director of Field Marketing,
Genesys (EMEA)

We are all thinking of ways to fill the gap that in-person interactions used to fill. I believe that reputation and credibility will be vital to establishing lasting, valuable customer relationships.

What steps have you taken to transform in-person events into digital formats?

We had to reexamine the reasons our customers attend our events—what they want to gain and what they want to learn. We began converting all our in-person events into digital activities with focused agendas, topics, and speakers aimed at helping our customers achieve those objectives, albeit remotely. To enhance these virtual events, we selected vendors capable of producing high-quality digital experiences, activities, and webinars. To the extent possible, we converted the original schedule of events to digital event platforms.

We also use long-tail search engine optimization to expand our marketing funnel. Interestingly, the change in formation did not negatively affect our ability to identify relevant leads. In fact, in some countries, the number of relevant leads increased. The new pandemic-driven normal has actually increased digital consumption. hese digital platforms are delivered professionally, and they have been well received by our attendees.

What are some of the biggest challenges you are
dealing with?

The biggest challenge has been replicating face-to-face interactions with customers. Currently, like many companies, we are unable to visit our customers in person. Instead, we have dramatically increased our account-based marketing (ABM) activities, and we are finding new ways to generate great customer experiences through digital platforms that offer personalized vision videos and e-book downloads, for example.

Specific, customized content drives the sales cycle. Highly detailed, relevant, and personalized content that addresses the customer’s specific business problems is the key that opens the door to future virtual meetings and business opportunities.

Though our digital events have been successful, we are currently looking at ways to replicate the excitement of travelling to in-person events, reconnecting with people we know, and connecting with like-minded individuals. For the time being, people seem to understand that what is most important are our collective health, safety, and well-being—even if we miss attending events in person.

What is the future of field marketing?

We are all thinking of ways to fill the gap that in-person interactions used to fill. I believe that reputation and credibility will become vital to establishing lasting, valuable customer relationships.

Digital marketing will become even more prominent in the future, as well. Working remotely has shown clearly how much digital tools have shaped and shifted our marketing teams’ focus toward digital channels.

One priority with my team is to inspire a culture of innovation and foster remote collaboration. At the same time, I want to keep my team motivated to dream up new and exciting digital ideas that will lead to meaningful engagements with our customers. Even after the world begins to open up again, digital solutions

Late last year, we had planned a mix of 60 percent digital and 40 percent in-person activities throughout the EMEA countries for the year. In contrast, just five years ago, the mix was 20 percent digital and 80 percent in-person activities.

will remain important in all aspects of marketing. Agile companies that can accelerate and embrace this digital transformation will be better prepared to successfully navigate the postpandemic era.

I believe that educational and marketing videos will become the dominant, preferred type of content consumed because they do not require people to meet in person. Communicating through such videos, marketers will be able to quickly and easily display products and services and enable customer trials. With the proven success of ABM programs, more companies will shift to using videos to illustrate how products and services will benefit them, in effect transforming a lead into a customer.

Event marketing is by no means a thing of the past. However, I believe that organizations will be reviewing the scope and scale of such events.

Atalay Aktas,

Director of Field Marketing, Genesys (EMEA)

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

SpyCloud develops enterprise-level security software to prevent account takeovers and investigate fraud. Our primary customers are security professionals in the C suite. Right now, we have about six people in sales who are responsible for various regions worldwide. Our role in field marketing is to provide our salespeople with the tools they need to succeed at events based on what has worked in the past and effective customer experiences. Events are a big part of our marketing strategy, and we have done more than 2,500 of them. We’ve gotten a lot of traction with events because they afford high-quality, high-touch interactions for our salespeople, especially for lead generation.

What parts of your marketing strategy have helped you transition to remote work?

We have been implementing account-based marketing (ABM), so much of our work has focused on strengthening those programs. The biggest challenge for our sales team is getting people’s attention and creating opportunities to get in front of customers. You often get radio silence in sales, so it’s up to marketers to keep the discussion going, and that is where an ABM approach can move the needle.

With nearly 20 years of experience in marketing, Jessica Cowan is passionate about driving demand generation, elevating brand awareness, and driving exceptional growth through highly effective go-to-market strategies, planning, and execution. Her depth and breadth of marketing knowledge supports her use of multiple channels to craft unique digital and offline customer experiences.

Jessica Cowan,

Field Marketing Manager, SpyCloud

For our organization, this means taking a strategic, multipronged approach—focusing on our named accounts and putting energy toward specific companies, including tactics such as appointment setting (we currently have three separate campaigns running), running digital ads that target our named accounts and titles, executing direct mailers, generating rich content that can be shared with our sales team, and creating email nurture campaigns. We have aligned closely with our sales teams and are not just looking for ways to generate leads but to drive pipeline acceleration and revenue for the organization.

To support our account-based approach, we have also been using Emissary Network, an advisory network of former Fortune 500 leaders and similar people who can provide insights about important accounts, connect us with the right people, and help us prepare for meetings with them. For example, if we want to get in front of people at company XYZ, Emissary Network advisors help us understand company XYZ’s buying outlook in security, which would then help us craft our message. Emissary’s advisors would not be part of our conversation, but they would facilitate our communications with the target company.

To generate brand awareness and leads, we have started to do more webinars, which have helped position us more as a thought leader. The webinars we host typically focus on account takeover prevention—the tactics cybercriminals use, how these tactics are evolving, and what you can do today to protect your consumers and employees. The webinars are typically an hour long and routinely get more than 100 registrants. For some webinars, we partner with another organization to host them; others are SpyCloud hosted only. Little educational content exists on account takeover prevention, and while competition is stiff in the security space as a whole, running our own webinars and sharing good content have helped us differentiate our company.

To generate brand awareness and leads, we have started to do more webinars, which have helped position us more as a thought leader.

Recently, we started targeting ads by email address to companies with which we have had interactions—a conversation or demo or similar. This approach may not be effective by itself, but it’s part of a larger, multipronged approach to get in front of people in different ways.

Where does field marketing go from here, and what changes do you see coming?

In-person events will come back when the pandemic has passed, but taking a more account-based approach with marketing will remain key. For us, because our company is so young, we will also become more prescriptive, deliberate, and savvier with our marketing efforts. We hope to do this by aligning ourselves closely with our sales teams, making sure that we are getting in front of the right people at our target accounts through advertising and other tactics, and continuing to provide amazing content from our thought leaders.

Jessica Cowan,

Field Marketing Manager, SpyCloud

What was it like in field marketing before COVID-19?

Typically, the approach focused on building long-term relationships and developing business-to-business opportunities, with in-person events and trade shows at the core of our work. We spent about 20 percent of our time working with sales, 30 percent on personal events, and 50 percent on big trade shows. Digital marketing was just a tool to guide customers and prospects toward an in-person event.

Using little moments, such as breakfasts, dinners, and workshops, with prospects was important and helped us build toward bigger conversations and, ultimately, conversion. The big events were the peak of the communication. Then, we used digital marketing to continue communication after those in-person events, the goal being one-to-one communication, where we could talk more specifically about solutions and costs. One-on-one relationships were critical to closing the deal.

How did you approach the shift to remote work?

A few things became clear as events across the globe were either canceled or moved online. We needed to:

Based in São Paulo, Brazil, Felipe Duarte Navarro brings more than 10 years of experience in managing global marketing projects in Latin America. His knowledge spans marketing, sales, digital transformation, market intelligence, pricing, customer success, alliance, and interconnected processes.

Felipe Duarte Navarro,

Field Marketing Manager LATAM, Akamai Technologies

be more data driven than ever but not to the exclusion of building personal customer relationships;

Practically speaking, how do you make content more relevant and personal?

We have a lot more work to do in planning and developing content right now. A big consideration is the timing of communication: What does my customer really need at this moment? Customers are absorbing a lot right now, so our communication must include products and solutions in a way that is sensitive to their current situation and needs. This approach creates so many more potential talking points. The content must be focused and delivered through the right channel at the right time. We must be more concerned about how our customers will receive the information.

How do you collect the data you need to create more relevant content?

We survey customers and really listen beyond the data to understand what they want from our content. With respect to webinars, for example, our customers say that they like us and what we are doing, but they have many webinar invitations

In the future, field marketers need to more fully understand what digital technologies are capable of and what can be done with them.

be more assertive because there is more competition for online events held on the same day;

translate personal experiences from in-person events into a digital format; and

be empathetic toward customers and prospects. Everybody’s world had changed, and we needed to find ways to address this impact in our communications.

and opportunities. They also tell us that they are busy and want to spend time with their families. If we are asking our customers to choose work over family and to choose us over other opportunities, we need to understand those needs and preferences. We can do a one-on-one meeting. We can do a newsletter. We can do a podcast. Customers tell us what they want: We really need to listen.

Where does field marketing go from here?

I think that field marketing will become more important because we connect with individual industry segments and cultures. I think that the trend toward digital marketing will continue, but how we build relationships with customers and prospects will differ. Relationships will extend beyond customers to include their families, coworkers, and others we previously have not talked about.

As for key skills, I think that sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of “liquid modernity” is relevant here: Things are continually changing and creating a new normal, and we need to be prepared for something like the current pandemic to happen again. Many people are talking about “growth hacking,” which focuses on finding data-focused, low-cost alternatives to traditional marketing.

[Field marketers] must understand how the data is created, where it comes from, what its limitations are, and what it's really telling us. In addition, we have to go deep to understand website, email, and social media analytics at a local level so that we can formulate strategies that work.

But this approach is not leading to greater knowledge about marketing. Instead, we need deeper dives into technology, data, and digital marketing; we need to understand better what technologies are enabling us to do, not just rely on the data. We need to go beyond data.

Meanwhile, we need to think about how to use digital marketing before and after events more effectively and to measure again to understand how things are working in the new world. In this way, marketing can become a critical resource for connecting companies to their customers so that they see it not as the problem but as the solution.

Felipe Duarte Navarro,

Field Marketing Manager LATAM, Akamai Technologies

What was field marketing like before the shift to
remote work?

First, we need to get the understanding right. Field marketing is not just about executing events. To me, field marketing owns the regional marketing objectives and designs the channel mix accordingly. The offline and online campaigns are nothing but part of the channel mix. We look at the number of leads in the pipeline in terms of how many are needed to meet quarterly and annual revenue targets. Once we have those targets, we work backward and develop a channel that has a mix of digital campaigns and offline events. Our regions are huge and diverse, and marketing tactics behave differently from region to region. We typically look at digital marketing to scale communication and catch the next growth markets while going heavy on offline events, where we need to establish personal connections and build networks to close deals in the current and
next quarters.

Vishal Chopra is a seasoned SaaS and B2B marketing leader with experience in acquiring the business and leads in North America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asian markets. He enjoys the most complex part of his job which is marketing with numbers, particularly those in digital marketing, funnel performance, and regional strategy. In his 15 years in marketing, Vishal has developed numerous winning strategies, successful cross-functional teams, and effective programs.

Vishal Chopra,

Head of Field Marketing (India, ASEAN, Middle East, Africa), Freshworks

What challenges and surprises did you find in going digital?

What has changed is how we optimize the channel mix, taking the whole of what we used to do and making it digital. We found both possibilities and challenges in this transition:

Even when
in-person events return, we should carry forward what we have learned from recent experiences in going digital.

Digital formats offered the benefits of scale, but the process of moving from physical to digital formats was not easy.

Our markets responded well to our new digital campaigns, but as the number of campaigns increased in the market, we began to see a decline in registrations and participants. We are now creating targeted campaigns fine-tuned to a specific segment or industry.

Along with the targeted content, we are experimenting with new digital formats because we observed webinar fatigue with our audience.

Moving forward, I think we will see a return to the concept, but this time personalized content is king. A general webinar will no longer suffice. It must be targeted by industry and its various segments. It must address the priorities of each segment and be personal, relevant, and contextual. If it’s not, we will lose any first-mover advantage and contribute to digital fatigue.

How do you recommend creating personalized content experiences?

One positive impact of transitioning to working online is that there has been a wider acceptance of digital formats and communication. People are opening up to new formats and attending digital events now where they may not have previously. We have been able to tap into more markets, even markets that we had

not targeted before, such as the hinterlands of Africa. Even when in-person events return, we should carry forward what we have learned from recent experiences in going digital.

Part of creating personalized content experiences is understanding customers’ preferences for face-to-face versus digital communication, even while in-person meetings are not viable. For example, Singapore and Hong Kong are more mature markets and value solutions, so video conferencing meetings would be absolutely fine in lieu of face time. In the Middle East or Africa (barring South Africa), face-to-face communication is still important. These experiences do not have to be big face-to-face events, though; instead, they could be as simple as a barbeque or a meet-and-greet at the end of a workday.

Marketers must truly understand their customers’ situation and help solve their pain points. Customers want to know, “What’s in it for me?” Answering this question is what will attract people. Put yourself in the shoes of your recipients, and consider how they would react to receiving your message. It’s no longer about what we have for them; it’s about providing content that resonates with them at that point in time. It’s not enough to speak their language; we have to provide a solution crafted based on empathy with their pain points from the start. Every point of diversity is an opportunity to deliver personalized solutions.

Customer success stories will also become central. These are great for communicating that you understand pain points and have solutions. Even better, let customers speak about you. Testimonials bring instant credibility.

I think that engaging people by using surveys, polls, and gamification will trend upward, as well. At the point of engagement, we need to ask what customers really think so that we can respond, adapt, and further customize the solutions we provide.

Any closing thoughts?

Every crisis brings a new set of challenges, and with those challenges comes new knowledge. One should be agile enough to adapt to the external environment. This time, the need was to impart the experience of offline events over the internet. In short, a marketer must always test, learn, fail, scale, and succeed.

Vishal Chopra,

Head of Field Marketing (India, ASEAN,
Middle East, Africa), Freshworks