Yes, we know it's common practice to establish goals before anything else, but in this scenario, examining your financial resources upfront should come first.

Understanding how much money you have to work with lets you draw out the playing field, helps you to identify the scope and ambition of your efforts and prevents a ‘goals gone wild’ scenario. It’s an approach that Ashley Mauras, Director of Experience Marketing at Quantum Metric, highly recommends.

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Ashley Mauras, Director of Experience Marketing, Quantum Metric

Why you should set a budget before setting field marketing goals‍

Even before you set your goals, look at your budget. It will give you clarity on both your limitations + opportunities, such as the number of events you can plan, the level of investment you can make in each event, and your target number of attendees.

For example, you could do a happy hour for 30 people and spend $3K, or you could book a luxury suite at a sporting event for $15K with limited tickets, which may lead you to target an executive-level audience to give you the best chance at ROI. Your budget will help you understand what’s feasible right away.

When calculating the impact of your events on the pipeline, it can help to weigh its efficiency against other channels, explains Ben Winn, Director of Community at FirstMark in this LinkedIn article.

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Ben Winn, Director of Community at FirstMark

How to calculate the impact of field marketing events on pipeline‍

Put simply, all you need to know is how efficient your field marketing spend is, and how its efficiency compares to your other customer acquisition channels. For every dollar you spend on it, how many dollars are you getting back?

If you have no idea what your field marketing spend efficiency is, you should start there BEFORE establishing a budget for it.

Now, this will give you a high-level budget to work with, but there’s a lot more to factor into your planning and budgeting, which we’ll unpack in the following sections.

Get a ready budgeting template for your field events - head to our field marketing guide.