5 Marketing Strategies to Create a Killer Service Sector Brand

Marketing a service can be complex but it is good to remember it still takes the tools and strategies many top branded products employ. The service sector really has the upper hand with customer loyalty because they are providing the service while it is being consumed, meaning they are face-to-face with the customer. With a service, gauging customer satisfaction can be more easily done because you have the ability to make sure the customer walks away satisfied.

However, along with customer satisfaction are the basics of marketing that if done correctly can define your position, escalate your brand awareness, and create preference amongst the customer segments you serve. There are lessons to be learned from some of the most well loved brands – use them!

Define your Brand

Great marketing starts with great research and a clear understanding of your customer. Uncover the meaning of your services in the mind of the customer and define your brand position. What do your services do for the customer? A brand is the sum of experiences. What do your customers experience?

Apple is consistent with the user experience whether it be product offerings, in-store, or on-line. Apple customers want innovation and Apple continues to be at the forefront of innovation and in demand by legions of fanatical customers.

Create and Maintain Your Value Proposition

What are you offering that your customers can’t get anywhere else? No matter what industry you’re in, your customer has choices. Competition is everywhere and in order to win in the market place you have to do something differently? What do you have that no one else has?

In the service sector your value is in the people who provide the service. Perhaps it’s a unique skill set, superior education, superior process, or differentiated pricing structure. Create a value proposition as to why customers should choose you. Don’t be the same as … be different than.

Through their secret formula, Coca-Cola offers refreshment. Customers ask for the refreshment by name because they know they can rely on the taste of Coca-Cola.

Be Where Your Customers Are

Know your customer. What are their media habits? What are their touch points? How do you get their attention in a crowded marketplace? If you are going to be at the top of mind in their consideration set you have to know exactly how to reach them. At 9:00 in the evening, are they watching Game of Thrones or are they scrolling through Facebook on their mobile phone?

Nike wants the sports enthusiast, so they show up to the sporting events. They are the sports apparel for many a top athlete. They know where to find their customers.

Showcase Your Expertise

Whatever it is that makes you different – flaunt it. The success of a service organization is based on how well the service is provided. If you are a law firm and you have a winning trial record, let people know. Create the information that showcases why you are the best at what you do. Find the thing you do better than anyone else and showcase it to your customers.

Louis Vuitton is expert at luxury. If you want one of the world’s best made handbags Louis Vuitton has been making them for over 100 years – their craftsmanship is legendary.

Set The Experience

What is the ideal experience for your customers? Walk in their shoes as they encounter your service. Understand the experience continuum. Know what you do well and what is lacking. Figure out what is most crucial and important to your customers. Make the experience exceptional and continually strive to improve it.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, BMW, they all have continuous improvement and new models. If you aren’t making the experience better someone else will.

Whatever your service – build your brand, guard it – make it stand for something extraordinary.

Why Marketing and Sales need to be BFF's

Too often when we meet with clients for the first time and get to know more about their organization, it is rarely discovered that the marketing and sales functions are on the same page with the company's goals. Sure, everyone likes to say that Kathy in marketing and Michael in sales talk all the time and work together well, as if they know it's the right thing to say but do they truly understand how important this relationship is to the revenue equation ?  

Traditionally, sales within an organization is viewed mostly as "transactionally" based and motivated towards "making their number." Marketing on the other hand has been responsible for branding, advertising, and creative collateral and is often characterized as an "expense."  While the two functions are both rooted in revenue growth, all too often they operate in separate silos. Companies that have not become more in tune with today's customer journey will be at a distinct disadvantage versus their more progressive competitors that have realigned their sales and marketing functions to become more congruous. 

Ever since the explosion of information, made available by the internet to anyone with a computer or smartphone, today's consumers are much more discerning towards what, when and how they buy. In fact, much of the buying cycle has been completed before a customer makes any contact with a sales person, if at all. Buyers are no longer at the mercy of a salesperson (good or bad) to learn about products or prices. This information is plentiful and readily available thanks to the internet and search engines. NOW more than ever before, sales and marketing need to work together to be competitive and achieve growth objectives.

For today's consumer, marketing has much more of a direct impact on sales. Companies that invest in digital marketing (internet based) are focused in lead generation, credibility, reach, strategy and engagement geared towards converting a prospect into a paying customer. Isn't that pure sales? Furthermore, shouldn't sales leadership and personnel want and need to know how many people are visiting the website, responding to social media content, emailing for "more info" about  products? Absolutely! Similarly, wouldn't marketing managers want feedback from their sales reps on what their customers like most about their products, who they are and how they found out about what is being sold? The answer is yes, of course!  Anything short of this ideal will limit a companies ability to maximize the benefits afforded to them from aligning their marketing and sales.

If your company hasn't taken time to invest in how to align their sales and marketing efforts, do so now and watch your business soar!

CMO vs Outsourced – Take a Look and Decide

Your company is growing. The great idea you developed has begun to flourish and with that comes the marketing, which creates the growth. As a CEO you are pulled in every direction – Financing, Operations, Accounting, and Human Resources. Everyday you get calls for sponsorship or opportunities for ad space, social media posts are either forgotten or robbing you of time spent elsewhere and as you know everyone is a social media expert. If you don’t pay attention to the marketing you won’t recognize the potential of your idea. If you do pay attention to marketing everything else will crumble. Should you hire a CMO or should you outsource your marketing functions?

Knowing when you need a dedicated employee and when you can rely on outside help is a critical juncture for many companies. Here are some things you should consider:

Return on Investment

As an entrepreneur you have perhaps unwittingly been doing all of the marketing functions – customer research, product development, distribution strategy, pricing, and promotion. Some of the functions have probably received more attention than others. Nonetheless, it is important to give them all equal significance. For most entrepreneurs you find there are not enough hours in the day and therefore some of the critical marketing functions are getting glossed over, not done at all, or not done correctly because you aren’t sure.

It’s important to take a look at each of the marketing elements and have a plan for how they are being addressed. Understand what you are good at and what you have time for. You can’t be an expert at everything and when it comes to marketing the landscape changes almost daily. Another pitfall of the “do-it-yourself” approach is the susceptibility to biased-thinking contaminating the strategy. This can lead you down the wrong path faster than anything else and is a critical variable to consider. The encompassing question is…do you have enough work for a full-time person – salary and budgeted hours? What is your ROI on a full-time employee vs. hiring a consultant?

If the marketing function can pay for itself through company growth as a result of the work, then a CMO makes sense. However, many smaller companies might find that the CMO salary is robbing them of valuable marketing activities that would produce more growth for the company. In this case it makes sense to outsource the CMO function. Get the most bang for your dollars and as the marketing activities bring in more business re-evaluate the CMO position in another few years.

Skill Set

Perhaps the bigger question is…can you find someone with the right skill set? Often a CMO comes with expertise in one area over another, but you need it all. Your social media is being ignored. You have no one in charge of the CRM and key customers are falling through the cracks. Customer service is non-existent. You need a new distribution strategy but you have no idea where to start.

The overwhelming amount of work and diversified functionality of a great strategic marketing plan means you will never have “enough” staff to do all the work. What happens when you hire that perfect person? They end up having strengths in one area and huge deficits in others.

Just because your new person is the CRM expert does not automatically qualify them to develop your content calendar and start posting to social media channels. What it does mean is that you need diversified capabilities. You need outside expertise and an agency with a breadth of knowledge to establish your foothold in marketing. The CMO function may need to wait until you have an established marketing strategy that is working for you. Then find a person who is qualified to do the activities that are producing the best results for your company.

Management

It’s easy to forget that even a CMO needs management and oversight and so does an agency. If you outsource to an agency, do you have a company point-person responsible for gathering necessary information and making decisions? While managing the outsourcing processes, having the fewest number of “company” people directly involved will improve the overall work process, communications and end results.

Perhaps your most important first step is a clear picture of your corporate structure and organizational chart. Where would a CMO fit? Who would they report to? Conversely, if you outsource to an agency, how will your company work with the agency?

Companies can get bogged down having too many people involved and not being able to make decisions. In this instance, the worst decision is making no decision at all.

Competitive Landscape

Understanding your competition is crucial to effective marketing. What position do you want to occupy in the mind of the customer? What position do you occupy in the market? Are you the leader, follower, or niche player? Utilizing a qualified CMO or agency can be extremely helpful in determining your “un-biased” competitive landscape. After all, your level of competition and your market position will most likely dictate how aggressive you are with your marketing.

Knowing the landscape for your industry will help you determine the type of marketing program you need. With your marketing goals in mind you will be able to develop a plan that will either include a full-time CMO with a specific skill-set or an agency that has strengths in the tasks you’re needing to accomplish.

Whether you are already committed to a full-time CMO or you are considering an agency as your go-to marketing department, knowing your strengths and goals is a crucial first step. It may even be ideal to outsource initially as you work through your first years of growth. If you decide on an agency, developing a very specific RFP is a necessary step to finding the right fit for your company. To get help with hiring the right CMO or to develop an RFP for an agency – contact Impact at www.impactmarketinginsights.com or call 423-991-3244.

Is the rush to social media killing your brand?

I’ve seen far too many poorly created social media posts and I’ve heard far too many companies scared about social media. Yes, social media is an important platform. Yes, social media can be helpful to your business. However, it is important to lay the groundwork and consider your audiences before you start posting.

I sat in a meeting just this week with a company wanting desperately to start a social media campaign. They were correct in the belief that they needed social media since their target market is almost exclusively a millennial generation. Their incorrect thinking was that they were ready for a social media campaign.

When we started talking about their product and their brand is was apparent that they were miles away from being ready to post anything on any social media platform. This company didn’t have a clear position in the market. They did not have a defined brand and thus no brand story. And, it seemed that the processes for delivery of their product were in need of some fine-tuning.

There is no better way to kill a product than to drive customers to the product before it is ready. While social media can be an incredible platform to get your message across to your audience it is also an incredible platform for your customers to tell the world your product is bad.

So before you start posting, consider these basics:

Define Your Brand

Make sure you have a great brand that fully represents your product and distinguishes you in the market. This may require some work to understand how your brand is currently viewed vs. how you want your brand to be viewed. If there are gaps – you need to work to fill them. Because there are a lot of components to your brand you may need to conduct a through assessment and then begin the hard work of making some changes to your product, systems, and people.

Know Your Customer

Understanding your customer is key to effective social media. Your goal is not just to post a lot, you want to post with engagement. It is very difficult to engage with an audience you don’t understand. So, to be engaging it is critical to know your target demographic and know what moves them. Find their points of interaction and how they engage with other brands. Reach them with the social media that matters to them and define your brand in ways that engage them to comment, tweet, post, and share. Through social media your target audience can carry your brand story.

Have a Plan

Remember, it’s not about how often you post but rather what you post. Just like any other media platform social media is crowded. To cut through the noise and clutter you must create meaningful content on a consistent basis. Create a plan that conveys your brand and creates pathways for your customers to engage. Part of your plan should include crafting the right messages for the specific social media site, understanding the habits of your target market so you know when to post and how often to post. Spend time developing careful messaging that reflects, personifies, and promotes your brand.

Social media shouldn’t scare you but it should move you get busy strategizing for your brand. It’s time to get social!

Make It Rain! Get the Most From Your Marketing

Is your marketing all about advertising and sales? Successful marketing needs a more comprehensive plan founded on good insights.

When I speak on marketing I always ask my audience the most basic question, “What is Marketing?” The answers are always the same – Sales or Advertising. And unfortunately for many people that is their marketing. But they probably aren’t getting the results they want and need by only looking at one tiny aspect of what should be a much bigger program.

To keep things simple, lets look at marketing as a big umbrella. Under the umbrella are your customers, products, distribution, pricing, and the promotions. The handle that holds up the umbrella is the research needed to determine the best mix of all the marketing variables

Understanding your customers through solid market research will take the guesswork out of determining the marketing variables. When you know and understand your customer you can achieve much more targeted and effective marketing through strategies that work. It’s easy to come up with great ideas but great ideas with a positive return on investment don’t just happen.

I always love the question, “What do you think I should do?” This is usually prefaced with a very cursory overview of a marketing conundrum. This is similar to asking your accountant how much tax you owe without giving them your financials. Or asking your physician to give a diagnosis without running any tests.

With marketing we have a lot of strategies and tactics, but wouldn’t you rather use the right strategies and tactics to achieve your marketing goals? This is only done through good research, insightful planning, and measured results.

Marketing is part art and part science. Do it correctly and make it rain without getting all wet!