Why Is Everyone Curious About Service and Product Marketing?

OK wait, Let us first understand, what is a Product and a Service?

• Product is a tangible good which is of value to the Customer.
• Service is an intangible entity which adds value to the experience of the Customer.

An example will help differentiate between the two terms. Imagine you go to ABC restaurant which specializes in famous Hyderabad Cuisine “Biryani”. Here the Product that restaurant offers is “Biryani” and the Services that restaurant offers is

Here the Product offered by the restaurant is “Biryani” and  Services offered are  In room Dining service (waiter takes your food order,provides you with a complimentary snack, puts on the AC along with soft music). Suppose you do not like the Biryani, In that case you may call the waiter and return the Biryani. The biryani amount could be refunded to you whereas you will not be able to return the Service already used by you.

What is Marketing ?

    What comes to your mind when you think of the word Marketing? Advertisements, Banners, TV commercials, Billboards etc. Right? But that’s not all what marketing is about. Marketing is a concept where the 4P's play an important role apart from the modes of marketing like advertisements and commercials. What are the 4'Ps?  The P's signify People, product, price and place. For a Business to flourish, It requires a good quality product/service, proper location, Skilled workers and competitive pricing. In today's competitive market, customers want to buy products from a convenient location at a good price and of a good quality.

In order to gain trust of these potential customers, Businesses implement Marketing strategies which help build a bond between the product and customer. The Strategies vary with the type of Marketing. I have seen business practitioners often getting confused between the two types of marketing. That is, “Product Marketing” and “Service Marketing”. The questions often asked by users is "Are the Marketing strategies same for both Product and Service". The answer is '"Yes". They are different!!

Service marketing

Service marketing implies the marketing of economic activities, offered by your business to the customer for specific duration and skillset. Service marketing strategies are primarily based on the following four principles

Product - To begin with, look at your service as though you were an outside marketing consultant brought in to help your company decide whether or not it's in the right business at this time. Ask critical questions such as, "Is your current service appropriate and suitable for the customers of today”, Compared to your competitors, is your service superior in some significant way to anything else available? If so, what is it? If not, could you develop an area of superiority? Should you be offering this service at all in the current marketplace?

Price - The second P in the formula is price. You need to examine and re-examine the prices of the services you offer to make sure they're still appropriate to the realities of the current market. Many companies have found that the profitability of certain services doesn't justify the amount of effort and resources that go into producing them. By raising their prices, they may lose a percentage of their customers, but the remaining percentage generates a profit on every transaction.

Promotion - The Third P in the formula is price of promotion all the time. Promotion includes all the ways you tell your customers about your products or services and how you then market and sell to them. Small changes in the way you promote and sell your products can lead to dramatic changes in your results. Even small changes in your advertising can lead immediately to higher sales. Copywriters often increase the response rate from advertising by 500 per cent by simply changing the headline on an advertisement. Large and small companies in every industry continually experiment with different ways of advertising, promoting, and selling their products and services.

Place - The fourth P in the formula is the place where your service is actually sold. Review and Reflect upon the exact location where the customer can come and easily avail your services. Sometimes a change in place can lead to a rapid increase in revenue in services.

Packing - The fifth element in the formula is the packaging. Stand back and look at every visual element in the packaging of your product or service through the eyes of a critical prospect. Small improvements in the packaging or external appearance of your product or service can often lead to completely different reactions from your customers. You should think of packaging in terms of everything that the customer sees from the first moment of contact with your company all the way through the purchasing process. Packaging refers to the way your product appears from the outside. Packaging also refers to your people and how they dress and groom. It refers to your offices, your waiting rooms, your brochures, your correspondence and every single visual element about your company. Everything counts. Everything helps or hurts. Everything affects your customer's confidence about dealing with you.

Positioning - The next P is positioning. You should think continually about how you are positioned in the hearts and minds of your customers. How do people think and talk about you when you're not present? How do people think and talk about your company? What positioning do you have in your market, in terms of the specific words people use when they describe you and your offerings to others?. Begin by determining the position you'd like to have. If you could create the ideal impression in the hearts and minds of your customers, what would it be? What would you have to do in every customer interaction to get your customers to think and talk about in that specific way? What changes do you need to make in the way interact with customers today in order to be seen as the very best choice for your customers of tomorrow?

People - The final P in the formula is people. Think in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who are responsible for every element of your sales, marketing strategies, and activities. To be successful in business, you need to think in terms of exactly who is going to carry out each task and responsibility. In many cases, it's not possible to move forward until you can attract and put the right person into the right position.

Services are of different types like financial services, advertising, business and management, consultancy, engineering and medical.

Need for Service Marketing

• To build Customer Relationship
• To gain Customer Satisfaction
• To reach more Customers

Product marketing

 Product marketing deals with advertising a product that you want your customers to buy.  A product which when owned by your customer will provide value to your customer. For this to happen you need to define your strategies based on the following four principles.

Product – The first of the Four Ps of product marketing is product. A product can be either a tangible good or an intangible service that fulfils a need or want of consumers. Whether you sell custom pallets and wood products or provide luxury accommodations, it’s imperative that you have a clear grasp of exactly what your product is and what makes it unique before you can successfully market it.

Price – Once a concrete understanding of the product offering is established we can start making some pricing decisions. Price determinations will impact profit margins, supply, demand and marketing strategy

Promotion – Promotion looks at the many ways marketing agencies disseminate relevant product information to consumers and differentiate a particular product or service. Promotion includes elements like: advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing and more.

Place – It’s critical to evaluate what the ideal locations are to convert potential clients into actual clients. Today, even in situations where the actual transaction doesn’t happen on the web, the initial place potential clients are engaged and converted is online.

Need  for Product Marketing

• To build customer trust in the product
• To gain customer satisfaction.
• To build customer network.

What did we learn?

  Products and Services have their own peculiar characteristics. They differ with one other in terms of Quality, Tangibility, Customization, Return ability and Ownership. Depending upon your type of business (Product or Service based), you may use the respective principals to form marketing strategies that would be beneficial to your business.