With so much attention being paid to marketing new products,
entrepreneurs building service businesses may feel overlooked. The
truth is, marketing a service can be tricky. For some companies,
success depends on creating a bundled offering that includes the
features customers or clients want most. For others, it's all
about differentiating based on customer satisfaction, with heavy
emphasis on testimonials and ongoing customer input.
If you're searching for the best ways to win customers and
build sales for your service business, here are five important tips
you can't afford to overlook.
1. Find a way to differentiate. If you were to take an
analytical look at your competitors' ads and brochures,
you'd find one glaringly obvious similarity--most are satisfied
with "me too" marketing themes. Consequently, few ever
stand out from the pack. Careful differentiation is essential to
successfully growing a service business. What sets your company
apart from all the rest? Perhaps it's the group of services you
offer or the way you excel at customer satisfaction. For best
results, identify the unique benefits you provide, and make them
the central focus of your marketing message.
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2. Add value by bundling services. While product
marketers often compete solely based on price, for many service
businesses price is a sign of quality. So if you price your service
below your competitors' services, you may communicate to
customers that it's of lesser worth. Instead of lowering your
price, why not add value? Focus on what your customers want most,
and find a way to bundle those features (or even some select
products) into your mix. This will increase the perceived value of
what you offer and give your company a leg up. You may even be able
to raise your prices on higher-value offerings.
3. Market to existing customers. For service marketers,
the sale doesn't end with a purchase: It's the beginning of
a relationship that continues with delivery and support. As a
result, satisfied customers or clients have the potential to become
repeat buyers. Do you have a program in place to market to your
customer base? The good news is that upselling current customers
costs less and yields significantly higher revenue than marketing
to new prospects. To build sales, use direct marketing, including
e-mail and direct mail, to offer special promotions to your
customer base throughout the year.
4. Win more referrals. Do you rely on referral audiences
to send business your way? It's not enough to simply call on
your referral prospects. You must also create a group of marketing
tools for your referral sources to use with your prospective
clients. Suppose you owned a home health-care company. By supplying
brochures and other materials to hospital workers to give to
patients requiring at-home care following a hospital stay,
you'd ensure that your complete information got through to your
most qualified prospects.
5. Raise your visibility. To reach potential customers
across multiple channels, consider expanding your advertising in
search-corridor media--where customers turn first when they're
ready to buy. Yellow Pages advertisers, for example, may benefit
from expanding into online paid search, with emphasis on local
search through engines such as Google and Overture. Link your ads
to a terrific website, complete with in-depth information about
your company and its services, and you'll give customers
confidence in your ability to meet their needs. And don't
overlook PR as a means to increasing your reputation in the
community. You can sponsor events, write articles for publication,
offer yourself as a speaker and participate in a range of
networking opportunities that allow you to build positive
word-of-mouth.
Contact marketing expert Kim T. Gordon, author of Bringing Home the Business, at www.smallbusinessnow.com. Her new e-book, Big
Marketing Ideas for Small Budgets, is available exclusively
from Entrepreneur at www.smallbizbooks.com.