To design marketing strategies around services, it is essential to understand the characteristics of services!
Building and managing a positive brand image is the main task of the art of brand building. But advertisers should remember that the process of brand building is not over once the sale is realised. In fact, it takes a lot of effort to maintain brand awareness and this is where designing and managing services becomes vital.
If a company wants to set itself apart from its competition, that company has to earn that differentiation. For starters, they should improve their point of sale services and their after-sale customer relations.
We should mention that there are studies that show that it is very common for companies to disappoint customers due to underwhelming after-sale services. Most airlines, banks, and hotels fail to keep the customers happy after the payment goes through. For that reason, the after-sale services are a notorious source of the creation of a negative brand image.
However, even the things that companies believe should benefit them can backfire greatly. For example, some companies focus too heavily on their regular customers. They offer discounts and extra services for big spenders, while they forget about new customers. That can cause a bad word of mouth circulating around and harming the company’s image.
So with that in mind, it comes as no surprise that the services sector is growing at an incredible rate. And in this context, we use the term “services” to denote intangible acts that don’t include a transfer of ownership. In this sense, service providers include banks, tech firms, hospitals, and many other examples.
Designing Marketing Strategies
In order for a company to design a marketing strategy around services, the marketers have to understand said services. The fact that services are intangible can make consumers uncertain about the product.
Take for example a customer entering a hair salon. The service includes cutting of the hair, but the customer might be uncertain about the end result. They might worry that the hairdresser can’t provide the service that they want.
So the marketers are facing the challenge of trying to build confidence in their customers. They can do so by spreading the word of their skills, offering excellent prices, or showing off their equipment.
The second issue that comes with the marketing of various services is the fact that they happen in real time. Namely, consumers can buy products and decide to use them later. But with services, it doesn’t work that way. Services, as such, are inseparable from the service provider and the time at which the customer visits the provider. That makes the time of the service provider potentially more valuable.
In turn, that can lead to a price increase, or a decrease of the time service providers allocate for a single customer. So to make sure that they are doing well, companies should have strict norms. They should only hire the best workers, and they should constantly monitor their performance. After all, service providers succeed or fail based on the effect they have on their customers.
Advertisers have to understand that traditional marketing is there to advertise physical goods. The focus in traditional marketing is on the physical product. On the other hand, the focus of service marketing is on the people, the service, and the results. Furthermore, we should note that customers tend to value lower prices more than they do high-quality services.
However, going into price wars with the competition is not always the best solution. In fact, companies can do a lot more by simply offering a wider range of services and prices.
In order to achieve differentiation, companies are using the Internet to advertise their specific services. Unfortunately, their competition can easily check what they are doing and copy them, effectively removing the differentiation. But even the temporary differentiation can greatly benefit the original service provider.
Managing the quality of the service is also incredibly important. In fact, service providers should check customer satisfaction after every service delivery. Only by making customer satisfaction a top priority can companies successfully grow and prosper. The management of a company should always create an incentive for workers to satisfy their customers.
Furthermore, every service provider should have a way for their customers to leave feedback. Any piece of feedback can greatly help the company in the long run. Leaving feedback allows customers to directly affect the way their favourite companies do business.
Lastly, companies should also allow their employees to leave their comments. If an employee isn’t happy with the job, they aren’t likely to perform it to the best of their abilities. And that can hurt the company’s prospects.
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