How is services marketing different

Or at least mustering up a little more patience and endurance for the long haul! Services — unlike products — cannot be seen, touched, held, etc. Buyers only know the true value of your service after they receive it often with full effects taking place weeks or months later. When people make these purchases, they are essentially buying into trust and ideas , requiring professional services firms to market not only the service itself, but the people, knowledge, and skills behind it.

Add marketing an intangible service into the mix and the funnel is further extended. Therefore, crafting specific marketing components for each stage of your unique sales cycle can make all the difference.

Your initial goal may even be to start with a small win — and then continue to upsell and cross-sell as you impress your clients again and again. Purchasing a product is characterized by a simple transaction, whereas investing in B2B services always requires some form of relationship.

As sellers of professional services, know that you are always marketing. Every touch point you have with a prospect or current customer throughout an engagement matters and supports the value you bring, particularly after the initial sale.

Even if a mistake is made, a defunct product can be returned and usually has fewer negative repercussions than a badly managed or poorly executed service.

We use cookies from third party services for marketing activities and to offer you a better experience. Read about how we use cookies and how you can control them by clicking "Privacy Preferences". The difference between product marketing and service marketing July 28, In Digital marketing. By Stephen Reilly. For businesses in the B2B tech world, differentiating themselves in a competitive marketplace is difficult. Understanding the difference between product and service marketing is a crucial first step to success.

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Product marketing refers to the process in which the marketing activities are aligned to promote and sell a specific product for a particular segment. Service marketing implies the marketing of economic activities, offered by the business to its clients for adequate consideration. You might be aware of the fact that there are different types of marketing.

Did you know that service and product marketing differ? Yes there is a big difference between the two. You can easily understand the difference in the explanations and differences given below.

Before moving on to the differences you need to understand the terms that is Service Marketing and Product Marketing. Start Your Free Marketing Course. To start with product marketing, it is marketing of tangible goods. Tangible goods or products include things that can be touched, felt and seen. In simple words the performance of tangible goods can be seen and understood by audiences you want to sell your products to. Product marketing in very simple words can be defined by the 4Ps of marketing and they are the product, the pricing of the product , the place and finally the promotions.

This type of marketing deals with the tasks of outbound marketing by marketing the products to existing customers and prospect customers and even others as they never know who may turn out to be their prospect customer.

Product marketing also differs from other and all the other functions of the organization such as communication marketing , strategies , marketing, online marketing , advertising, etc.

It is a continuous process of maximizing profit by promoting a product and selling the same to audiences mostly people who need the product, it also creates a requirement of the product in audiences. Firstly service marketing is marketing of intangible assets. It is huge and versatile it works in two ways that is. Business to customers includes companies in the industries that give or provide services directly to customers in exchange of some fee.

Business to business includes companies in the service industry that give service to other business segments. Service economy is a completely different part of the growing world economy. When you describe a service you cannot define it the way you define a product.

Unlike a product you cannot touch, feel, smell and taste a service hence service is an intangible. This is the biggest difference between the two that is service and product. Marketing service is unique as it involves challenges like attaching tangible characteristic to something that is intangible.

Products and services are both different in their own ways and means and hence are their marketing strategies. Product marketing cannot be like services and services cannot be marketed like products.

Below infographics on Service Marketing vs Product Marketing,throws light on major points of differences between the two. Product Marketing and service marketing patterns or techniques are different for both.

Because products are tangible they can be touched, seen, felt, tasted, smelled etc. However marketing techniques for services are way to different for intangible services because the customer cannot see, feel, sense, taste or smell services. Product Marketing can be done by showing and displaying them; however, services can only be experienced.