Tactics and plays

How do you build a field marketing program from scratch?

Start with one format, in one city, against a named list of accounts you are already trying to win. Run it three times before judging it. The common failure is starting with a calendar - a conference here, a dinner there, a roadshow next quarter - which produces activity nobody can evaluate and a budget that gets cut at the first review.

October 2, 2026

Step 1: pick the accounts before the events

Field marketing is account-based or it is nothing. Begin with the twenty to fifty accounts the revenue team most wants to move this year, and treat every event decision as a question about those accounts.

This inverts the usual order. Most programs choose an event, then look for accounts to invite. That is how you end up in a city where none of your targets are.

Step 2: find where those accounts actually are

Cluster the account list by geography and look for density. Three targets in a city is not a dinner. Twelve is.

Two data sources matter and most teams only use the first:

Where the target accounts' relevant people are based.
Where your own relationships are. A city where your CEO has eight former colleagues is a city where the room will fill.

Step 3: choose one format and run it three times

Format	Seats	Best for	Watch out for
Executive dinner	10-14	Breaking into named accounts	Expensive per head; dies without warm invites
Roundtable	10-20	Category education, peer credibility	Becomes a webinar if anyone presents
Sports suite or experience	15-40	Existing relationships, expansion	Weak for cold targets; hard to run a conversation
Conference side event	20-60	Efficiency when targets already travel	You compete with the conference itself

Pick one. Running three formats once each teaches you nothing; running one format three times teaches you how to run it.

Step 4: build the invitation machine

This is the part that decides whether seats fill, and it is operational rather than creative:

Segment the list - champions, customers, active pipeline, closed-lost, unengaged targets.
For each guest, identify the colleague with the strongest existing relationship.
Assign the invitation to that colleague, with the words written for them.
Confirm a few credible names first, then use them in the remaining invitations.
Work the +1: ask each registrant to bring one specific person from their network who fits the profile.

Step 5: measure accounts, not attendance

Record the account list and its state on the day. Re-measure a quarter later against comparable accounts that did not attend. Report new stakeholder engagement, restarted deals and reopened closed-lost accounts - not headcount and photographs.

What to skip in year one

A full-year calendar. You do not yet know which format works for your buyer.
Branded swag budget. It has never once decided whether a VP attends.
Large conferences as a primary channel. They are the most expensive way to meet people who are also meeting your competitors.
A second city, until the first one has run three times.

Where the coordination cost sits

The honest difficulty of this program is step 4. Knowing which of two hundred colleagues has the warmest tie to each of forty guests - and then tracking who has asked whom - is the work, and it is why most programs collapse back into one marketer sending one email. Orbb's Events Agent exists to run that step: it picks the city from the relationship graph, builds the segmented list, assigns each invite to the closest colleague, and sources the +1s.