This episode of Anonymous Marketer is supported by:
Episode Summary
Many companies view field and event marketing as the same thing. And if you’re a field marketer, sometimes you have to figure out how your role fits into the larger picture.
In this episode of The Anonymous Marketer, Nick Bennett and guest Arthur Castillo (Head of Dark Social & Evangelism at Chili Piper) tackle questions from the community and discuss the primary differences between a field marketing lead and a manager.
After pinpointing the difference between a lead and a manager, they also touch upon the importance of in-person events in 2023. Arthur shares how he approaches live events at Chili Piper and highlights what his team has learned from creating content at major tradeshows.
Guest Profile
- Name: Arthur Castillo
- What he does: Arthur is the head of Dark Social & Evangelism at Chili Piper.
- Company: Chili Piper
- Noteworthy: In his current role, Arthur focuses on helping companies eliminate friction in the meeting process.
Key Insights
- Many companies still equate field marketing with event marketing. But, as Arthur says, event marketing should be a subset of field marketing. And while the first is more about execution, the latter revolves around strategy. In addition, these strategies have changed over time. In the past, the focus was on physical location (territory-based model), while today, it is on the community. ''Nowadays, you're a field marketing team of one or two, and you can't do marketing in a territory. So I see field marketing linking nicely to the community. [What's more,] Ryan Narod from Mutiny thinks modern-day field marketing is community marketing.''
- Events are valuable content sources if you have a defined narrative. That includes a question or a theme you want participants to give their opinion on and explain how that ties to their business or helps them overcome particular challenges. For instance, Arthur's team creates pieces from events where participants introduce their business in addition to answering the question. The result is customer stories that can be used by all parties involved. ''One of the biggest learnings we recently implemented was understanding our content narrative. [...] So we gave ourselves a theme of pipeline conversion, and that gave us direction. Once I knew the narrative we were trying to go for, it made my interviews easier. [...] The shareability of the video content we were creating went up when I gave them an opportunity to pitch what they do and what their company does. [...] So I'm thinking about the content they would get excited to share.''
- People use events for networking, but you need to provide them additional value. In the post-pandemic world, that involves organizing a gathering with a clear agenda. That's not a complete novelty, but just being in the same room with people from the industry and casually chatting over a drink no longer drives attention. ''[Instead], they want to have a content theme or topic that would bring together these like-minded people, and they could share their challenges and opportunities. So that's how we're starting to change our events. We're serving people beforehand because [...] you can see that they want a driven discussion around a topic they're passionate about or curious about where they're at in their business.''
Episode Highlights
The Difference Between a Field Marketing Lead and a Field Marketing Manager
”[As a manager], you’re leading the go-to-market of field marketing and not discussing strategy with anybody else. So you’re taking it from scratch and saying, ‘Hey, these are the programs I’m going to run.’ Whereas a lead would work with a manager and try to understand some of the programs and then help in executing them.
So the difference is whether you’re creating those programs yourself or helping lead and execute them.”
If Your Current Employer Doesn’t See The Importance of Your Role, Don’t Hesitate to Present Your Achievements But Also Explore Other Options in the Market
”My dad gave me this piece of advice. Know your value in the open market. […] When you know other people in the market are valuing you, and you come to that table with other options, it’s not like, ‘Hopefully, they agreed to this. Otherwise, I’m back to the drawing board.’ It’s like, ‘If they don’t agree to this, cool. I have other options lined up.’
If you want to stay there, you can start to frame it in a way like, ‘These are my needs, and this is what’s important to me in this role.’ And you can also say, ‘Look, in the work I’ve done for the company, this is what I have achieved.’ Also, tie it to revenue if you can. That’s huge.”
Digital Events Will Never Replace In-Person Gatherings
”It’s funny, and maybe we even disagree on this. But going into it, talking to people like Chris Walker and others in the industry, I almost was like, ‘Yeah, trade shows are not the way to go.’ If I’m in charge of this budget, I am not gonna invest in it.
And then there were a couple of good trade shows we knew our ICP would be at. And lo and behold, we started getting some results, and I’m like, ‘Maybe I should reframe the way I look at it.’ And we’ve had a ton of success at a lot of these events. So in-person will be so hard to replace; I don’t know if you can ever replace it.”
