Discover what are the marketing strategies for service business. A service business has a different marketing approach than a manufacturer or retailer. The latter usually focuses on the product and its benefits, while the former depends on building relationships with customers. To achieve this, service businesses must focus on doing the right marketing follows with great customer service in order to gain more loyal customers.
Service businesses also have to be very creative in their marketing efforts. They have to find new ways to reach out to potential customers. One way is through social media, which can be a great tool for reaching out to people who may not have known about your business. Another way is through marketing campaigns that have been successful in the past.
In order to do this, service businesses need to have a clear strategy on how they want their customers to be reached out to. They also need a thorough understanding of who their customers are and what they want from them. This will help them determine which kind of marketing approach would work best for their particular industry or company.
What is a service business?
A service business is a type of company that provides customers with services or products. It can be any kind of company from anything from a small restaurant to a major international corporation. I understand that sometimes service companies sometimes sell products as well.
For example, a consulting business can also sell software or books which are consider products But in this article, I will refer to them as service business because their main business offers are their services.
Which one is better: online or offline marketing strategies for service business?
In general, there are two main types of marketing strategies that service businesses can use: online and offline. Online marketing strategies include social media marketing as well as other forms of internet or social media advertising such as Facebook ads, PPC or banner ads, content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
Offline marketing includes a wide variety of different ways to reach out to potential customers. This includes things like business cards, print materials, telemarketing calls or in-person visits. However, most businesses find that the best way to reach out to their customers is through a combination of both online and offline marketing strategies.
Online or digital marketing has becoming more important due to the pandemic so the focus of this article is on how to market your service business with digital marketing. Just to clarify, I do use both online and offline marketing for my businesses in real life.
What types of marketing can we use for service business owner?
Marketing is a term that refers to any form of communication used to promote a product or service. It includes all forms of advertising, public relations, word-of-mouth, corporate brochure or catalog, content marketing, social media marketing and many other forms of communication.
Even though there are many types of marketing, you don’t have to do it all but just focus on 1 or 2 that are effective for your business. If you are new business then just start with one. After you get results from it, you can add more. In this article, I will focus more in related to digital marketing for service business.
Digital marketing refers to the process of applying online strategies and techniques for the purpose of promoting a product or service, including email campaigns, social media advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), website development and web design. Digital marketing is now one of the most effective ways to promote any business as well as consumer products because it can reach people directly through various platforms such as blogs, social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Tik Tok and more.
How to choose the right marketing approach for your service business?
Firstly, you need to determine which one is best suited for your type of business and what works best for your target market. To help you with this decision, here are some tips on how to choose the right marketing approach:
Understand who are your target customers
To understand clearly who are your target customers, you need to answer these questions:
What is your target customer?
If you have many service offers then always start with one of your professional services. Look at your current client base and segment them and see who they are. Then you can focus on your top customers’ segments.
For new small business owner, you may need to do market research to understand your market demands and find out who are your potential clients who are looking for your services. And you want to niche it down your target customers. It is very important because it helps you to understand what are your customers’ needs and wants, which will help you to be successful in your service business.
Who are the top three competitors in your market?
Find out who are your top 3 competitors especially in your local business and find out who are their fans or followers from the social media pages or other online presence. These information will also help you to brainstorm and come up with your target customers ideas.
Which social media platform or messaging tools such as email, whatsapp, messenger, etc?
To reach your target customers, you need to use the best tool or medium that will make your target audience feel more comfortable. So once you know who are your target customers then you want understand which social media or messaging platforms do they usually use so that you can start your online marketing.
In order to generate leads or new customer for your business it is important to be strategic and focus on the right platform. In general there are 3 types of digital marketing platforms I would use:
1. Social media platform popular with your target customers or in related to your specialization.
2. Messaging platform that they commonly use for their daily life.
3. Search platform such as Google, Youtube that they usually refer to to find answers for their questions.
What is the costs of this business marketing approach?
Many of the service business owners especially new business owners always like to save on marketing costs but I can guarantee you that your marketing budget is one of the most important key towards the success of you business. To run a successful business, you must know that you need to pay for the customer acquisition cost, which is your advertising or other marketing budget. And you need to invest in the other marketing channels such as web design, website development, etc.
However if you are using digital marketing, it is usually cheaper than other traditional marketing methods like newspaper or billboard advertisements. Furthermore, it is also much more effective and you can reach a wider audience compared to other traditional marketing methods and what I like about online marketing is that it is trackable on all my online advertising investments. The main benefit of internet marketing is that it can be done at a low-cost and very minimal risk if you do it properly.
What are the different marketing strategies for service business?
There are many different marketing strategies you can use to market your business, the most common strategy is that of direct online marketing. Direct online marketing means sending out mass emails or mass messages to potential customers. This popular form of digital marketing usually involves sending emails directly to potential customers through an autoresponder or newsletter type program or chatbots to their messaging platform.
Another example of a successful digital advertising strategy for service businesses is using social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter or TikTok to connect with your potential customers. Once connect with them, you can use content marketing to attract them and build relationship with them before presenting your services offers to them.
To learn how to run your Facebook and Instagram advertisement, you can refer this is official learning site:
https://www.facebook.com/business/learn
In today’s digital marketing era, there are many marketing techniques you can use to market your services online. Other methods which are effective are social media advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), and PPC ads. Out of these three, my preference is the social media advertisements because it has a low-cost customer acquisitions for my service business and it usually brings result in a short period of time.
For more social media marketing tips, read this article: https://andrewcheah.com/new-marketing-strategy-for-service-business/
Best way to market your service business?
For any service business owner, the best way to market your services is by using social media advertising such as Facebook ads (this is my thought). The focus of advertisement is always to bring in leads rather than selling because usually services are not like common products which is usually easier to perceive by the customers. Yes, there are some simple service package you can sell online like the standard products and it all depends on the simplicity and costs of your service package.
However my main objective for social media ads is usually to build brand awareness and bring in leads so that I can nurture them to become my lifetime customers (lead nurturing). Nurturing and networking with your potential clients are very important. This can be done in many ways but to me the great way is always focus on building relationship with potential customers before presenting your offer to them.
Watch this video on how I use social media to market my small business:
Why is it important to build your own leads or email list?
That’s why it is important to build your own leads or email list. I usually use an email marketing autoresponder and a customer relationship management (CRM) software to help me nurture my leads as well as tracking of the status of my sales and marketing workflow. There are many sales and marketing automation software today but these are the 2 software I used the most and I believe most successful marketers are definitely using these software.
If you don’t have a list, it is difficult to promote your business. Even if you do have a list, chances are that most of them won’t be interested in buying from you because there’s no relationship or trust built up between the two parties. There’s also a high chance that they might just forget about your offer and move on to other offers.
The best way to nurture your leads is by using an email marketing autoresponder and a CRM software.
With email marketing autoresponders, you can create an automated sequence of emails that are sent to your leads when they sign up for your offer or product. These sequences will make sure that the lead stays in touch with you until he decides to buy from you or she never buys from you at all. In fact, I have been using this technique for over 5 years now and it has really worked for me. Great thing about using autoresponder is that you can create automation sequences as well as schedule your emails or newsletter so that when you are on vacation, your autoresponder is still working for you. That’s what I love about these automation software.
7 other online marketing strategies for small service businesses
Besides using email marketing and social media ads, I also occasionally use these online marketing strategies. Here are 7 other digital marketing strategies that I am currently using or trying out:
1. Build a blog: Creating a blog is definitely one of the best ways to market your business and it’s also an excellent way to build trust with your leads or customers because it shows that you are really interested in them and what they have to say. You can even build a blog just for your current clients or leads so that they know that you value their opinion. If you don’t want to create your own blog, there are many tools out there like Medium, Blogspot or WordPress.
2. Create value-added social media content: It’s very important to create quality content for your social media accounts because it can increase your online reputation and authority. In addition, you can also generate leads from your social media account because people love sharing information with their friends or followers. Though these content, you can educate your clients more about the value of your services and what are the benefits they will gain from your services.
3. Use a blog or social media comments system: Using a comment system on blogs and social media is a great way to build up credibility with your leads or customers. You can also use social media comment system on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. When you have a blog commenting workflow set up, you will be able to build up relationships with people who read your comments and connect with you. This is one way to grow your social media followings as well besides growing your email list.
4. Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is a great way to generate leads and sales for your business. The easiest way to do this is by creating an affiliate website or blog where you will post your offers that you recommend through your blog or content. You can create content around specific niche topics and include links in it so that people will be more likely to click on the links and purchase the product that you recommended. By selling others’ affiliate products, you are also able to generate leads for your business. Just make sure the products that you sell are related to the service you offer.
5. Webinar marketing: Webinar marketing is another way to generate leads and sales for your business. The easiest way to do this is by creating a webinar that you will promote through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. You can even create webinars using tools like Zoom, WebinarJam or YouTube. Webinar is one of the best way to educate your prospects about your service and the benefits they will gain.
6. Video marketing: Video marketing is a great way to promote your business. The easiest way to do this is by creating video content that you will post on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube. It’s easy to create and edit video today even on your mobile phone, my favorite mobile apps are Capcut and Inshot.
7. Live event marketing: Live event marketing is another great way to generate leads and sales for your business. The easiest way to do this is by hosting a live event that you will promote through your social media channels. A live event can be a networking event or a summit or simply an interview. This is one easy way to generate leads.
The most important part of doing marketing for your service business is taking actions. If you want to wait until you learn everything before you start your marketing, then that’s the big mistakes because digital marketing evolves so fast that we have to keep on learning while doing it.
Another advice is that if you are busy business owner who are involved in delivering your services like more service business owners then another smart choice is to engage someone or an expert who are able to understand your business and experienced in digital marketing to do the online marketing work for you.
If you want to develop your personalized digital marketing strategy, you can book a free strategy session with me at https://hi.andrewcheah.com/meet or click the photo below to book your session.
