Imagine that you have an amazing product to sell. Few other people provide it, and it can change clients’ lives for the better.
The trouble is, it’s invisible. Your customers can’t test it before purchase or return it if they're unsatisfied. Sounds hard to sell, right?
If you own a service industry business, this is your problem to solve. This is why service businesses require a specific marketing approach, commonly known as service or services marketing.
Here’s what you need to know about marketing services, including the importance of customer support and the unique elements of a service marketing mix.
What is service marketing?
Service marketing (or services marketing) is the promotion of businesses that sell intangible services rather than physical products. Services marketing emerged to help these kinds of businesses understand and respond to the unique challenges of marketing services.
Service business marketing can help companies differentiate themselves in a market, communicate service quality, and build customer trust. Here are some service company types that rely on this approach to advertising:
- Rental service companies
- Branding and marketing agencies
- Consulting service firms
- Management service firms
- Professional services firms
- Educational service providers
- Beauty, health, and wellness service providers
- Financial service companies
- Medical services providers
- Travel and entertainment service companies
Characteristics of service marketing
Service marketing strategies and product marketing strategies differ significantly. Although they share marketing objectives like attracting potential customers, boosting customer satisfaction, and increasing sales, an effective service marketing strategy has to account for the lack of physical products.
Here's an overview of the unique characteristics of service marketing and how service and product marketing efforts differ:
- Intangibility. Services are intangible—you can’t hold one, measure its dimensions, or put it on a shelf. It’s up to a service marketing team to help a target audience understand service quality and value these intangible benefits.
- Inseparability. Services are produced and consumed simultaneously, which means that the value proposition of a service is a quality interaction with the service provider.
- Variability. Service quality depends on the service producer. No two service interactions are the same, so service marketers focus on helping customers recognize quality service and managing their expectations around potential variability.
- Perishability. Services require direct distribution: You can’t produce them in advance, store them for later use, or ship them to a different location to meet customer demand. This means that service marketing teams are also responsible for managing demand patterns to avoid bottlenecks that could hurt service quality or employee satisfaction.
- Customer participation. Because customers participate in service delivery, service marketing helps potential customers understand their role in an interaction. Product-based businesses can deliver on their value proposition with little customer cooperation, so product marketing focuses less on customer education.
What is a service marketing mix?
Your marketing mix is the collection of conceptual marketing tools you use to promote a product or service. In product marketing, companies use a marketing mix known as the four Ps: place, promotion, product, and price. By contrast, the service marketing mix contains seven Ps: product, price, place, promotion, people, processes, and physical evidence.
Here’s an overview of the seven Ps of marketing services:
1. Product. Your product is the service you provide to customers. Service marketing teams use something known as a service blueprint to define the scope and process. Service blueprints tell customers what they are purchasing and align business and customer expectations.
2. Price. Price refers to the cost of your service. Service marketing pricing strategies often factor in costs for labor, overhead, materials, markup, and competitor pricing.
3. Place. Place refers to your service location or distribution channel. It can be a physical environment or an online platform.
4. Promotion. Promotional activities raise awareness and increase demand for a business’s service offerings. They can involve promoting services through paid advertisements, public relations campaigns, social media marketing, and other service marketing strategies.
5. People. People deliver your service, and they’re directly responsible for service quality. Many service industry companies invest in training programs to help employees build skills to meet customer needs.
6. Process. Your service process is how you deliver your services. A good service process maximizes efficiency and streamlines procedures for employees and internal teams. Although a positive customer experience is critical to service companies, delivering that experience at the expense of employee satisfaction can be detrimental to your company in the long run.
7. Physical evidence. These are the visual cues a customer receives during service delivery, such as the physical environment and branding efforts. Your service marketing team can use them to influence customer perception of service quality; for example, a business consulting team might arrive on a client’s premises in professional attire and present a polished, branded slide deck of findings.
Crafting an effective service marketing campaign
- Visualize outcomes
- Provide a quality customer experience
- Train your customers
- Sell expertise
- Use your customer relationships
Service marketing isn’t about reinventing the marketing wheel—it’s about subtle strategic adjustments designed with service promotion in mind. Here are five strategies to help you effectively market services to your target audience:
Visualize outcomes
Effective service marketing strategies make intangible benefits as tangible as possible. Your customers might not be able to hold or point to the service provided, but they're more likely to buy if they understand how it will solve a problem or improve their lives.
What this looks like will depend on your specific service product and target audience, but here are a few examples:
- A hair salon might post before-and-after photos of customers to its social media accounts.
- A business-to-business (B2B) consulting firm might create case studies demonstrating its impact on client sales figures and business success, sharing them through email and social media.
- A massage therapist might maintain a blog about the benefits of massage, highlighting improvements in athletic performance with less pain.
Provide a quality customer experience
Customer experience is important for all business types, but it’s a particularly important factor for service sector companies. Customers have longer and repeated interaction with your business, and the service delivery process can affect their perception of service quality. Here are a few strategies:
- Appoint account managers. Account management is essential to building and maintaining positive customer relationships. Dedicated account managers can help you understand and meet customer expectations, boost customer retention, and improve customer satisfaction.
- Invest in customer support. High-quality customer support is a critical part of service marketing. You might provide multiple contact options (including phone, chat, and social media) and proactively follow up with customers after service delivery.
- Gather customer feedback. Customer feedback can provide valuable insights into customer perceptions. You can use it to understand whether your marketing efforts effectively convey quality and to identify and remedy any pain points in your service process.
- Conduct target market research. Market research provides valuable insights into your target audience and competitors. It can help you understand customer needs and evaluate competitor service providers.
Train your customers
Unlike product marketing, service marketing requires customer participation. Effective service marketing strategies coach potential customers, encouraging behaviors that help the service provider meet their needs.
For example, a real estate agent’s marketing team might encourage clients to meet with a loan officer, set a realistic budget, be upfront about their priorities, and communicate when those priorities change.
Sell expertise
The training, skill, and judgment of service personnel are a major part of a service company’s value proposition, so they’re a key focus area of effective service marketing efforts. Highlighting the skills and experiences that enable service providers to offer superior service quality can help service marketing teams attract and convert more customers. It can also streamline the delivery of a service product and improve relationships with individual customers by encouraging them to trust and value that expertise. You might showcase your team on social media, offer free community classes or webinars, or maintain a customer resource center on your online platform.
Say you own a high-end hair salon, and a customer comes in with a picture of a style that won’t work with their hair texture. If your service marketing strategies have effectively built trust, your customers will value your opinion. Instead of being upset that you won’t do what they asked, they’ll be glad they paid for your expertise and grateful that you saved them from making a mistake. If your service marketing strategy doesn’t effectively position you as an authority, your customer might insist on the bad cut, be upset if you refuse, and be even more upset if you comply.
Use your customer relationships
Service marketers focus on building strong customer relationships and maximizing customer satisfaction, and you can use those relationships to support your marketing efforts. If your services tend to be infrequent purchases (like a window replacement), you might offer supplementary services (like window cleaning) or additional services (like exterior painting and repairs). This lets you earn repeat business by selling to customers who know you and value your service quality.
You can also start a customer loyalty program that rewards current customers for purchasing additional services or referring potential customers to your business. Many customers are eager to support quality service industry businesses and require minimal encouragement to refer others to your company.
Service marketing FAQ
What is meant by service marketing?
Services marketing (or service marketing) is a broad term that covers all of the efforts needed to promote a service industry business (as opposed to a business that sells physical products). Services marketing requires thoughtful pricing strategies, customer support programs, and marketing strategies that demonstrate service quality to potential customers and your existing client base.
What is an example of service marketing?
A landscaping business might offer multiple customer support options, allowing customers to contact them by phone, email, chat, or on social media platforms. It might also use social media for proactive customer support, follow up with customers after service delivery by DM, and encourage them to send photos and ask questions on social platforms.
Who uses service marketing?
Any business that provides services can use service marketing. Service business marketing efforts focus on demonstrating service quality, understanding demand patterns, and maximizing customer satisfaction with a high-quality customer support experience.
