Marketing a service business

Marketing a service business is not at all like marketing a product - based business - it's much more difficult. You have to solve someone's problem. They would like nothing more than to unload their problem onto someone. Lets try for you. A service business takes on other peoples problems to solve them.

Marketing is NOT advertising - advertising is basically salesmanship in print - with the hello!! We're here tag. Marketing takes over straight away after, until the money is in the hand and it then carries on to give your customer a sweet, sweet memory of a delightful buying experience. Think how many times you have parted with the money to swear to your dying day that you will never, ever patronise that establishment again. Pain or what? Then think why the businesses you like and always use are so high in your esteem. They give you the feeling of security and a job well done, don't they? But start with advertisements......

So if you are a new business how do you get yourself out there? Some suggestions:
Vans,vans,vans! Top, back and sides and the bonnet. When your van breaks down, and is being towed in, even more people will notice your adverts, and even in the breakers yard the ads continue to work. Take this seriously from the writer, who refused to put any adverts on the last van we had. Yellow pages and local directories can sometimes work, but only sometimes.

The advent of the Web has made it possible to get much more information about your business in front of many more people. So will your stationery all carry your web site address? Works wonders. So will local bulletin boards and adverts in newspapers locally. Never forget that the small newsletters and inserts in supplements as well as the free newspapers, actually get many more inquiries from one advert, than perhaps one in a local weekly paid newspaper would. The thinking is that these newsletters lie around houses much longer than weekly newspaper. Before they wrap the waste fish guts in them - they notice your advert.

Just talk to people and find out what their problem is. Very often it is the service business they are currently using. That's sales, that is!

Marketing is much more than advertising your services. It is pure hand - holding Marketing never stops at the first inquiry. That is when it starts. You have to give people a reason to use your services and keep on giving them a reason how quickly do you follow up inquiries, give a quote, show how you can help them to get over their problems, follow up after the contract? That is marketing. Hold the customer gently by the hand, and give them a reason why they should use your business. Give them a reason to pay you what you ask (if it is not within the bounds of usury) Help them make a choice - you.
Good customer care is really marketing. Make it easy to do business with you.
Advertising is not marketing, it just ensures that you are kept in the public eye at all times. With your dynamic sales message. Good marketing ensures that you stay there, after the sale. Marketing gets the money in your hand. Advertising does not, and you may assume that 3/4 of it is money wasted - you are right about that. Sales and advertising go hand in hand, marketing comes in somewhere in the middle. If you hope you have made a dynamic sale and fall down on your marketing, your sale is
lost. That is, no money comes your way, so to speak.