The 7 P’s of Services Marketing - Promotion (Service Marketing 01.05.2021)

The 7 P’s of Services Marketing

4. Promotion

Promotion refers to the different ways you communicate, describe, and advertise your product.

Because they are intangible, services can be more difficult than products to promote. This is because there is nothing physical that can be assessed by a potential customer.

 

Common ways to promote services include:

1. Using celebrity endorsements to create trust in the product.

2. Offering guarantees to remove risk.

3. Using testimonials.

4. Listing any “household name” customers.

5. Using branding to highlight the quality of a product.

 

Promotion – The service industry usually has stiff competition across different verticals and your business would need a lot of promotions to pass on the right message to potential customers. While advertising, online and direct marketing are the best ways to promote your service you need to have a good mix of communication channels to address a larger audience.

 

Service providers offering identical services such as airlines or banks and insurance companies invest heavily in advertising their services. This is crucial in attracting customers in a segment where the services providers have nearly identical offerings.

 

Also, because services are intangible, customers often look for any tangible elements to help them understand the nature of the service experience.

 

For example, in the hotel industry the design and decor of the hotel as well as the appearance and attitudes of its employees will influence customer perceptions and experiences.

 

The music and ambience along with the food and service provided by employees in Hard Rock Cafe influences the service experience for their customer.

 

For Virgin Atlantic airlines- the airplane, the comfortable seats, the in-flight entertainment and the employees- steward or stewardess influence the customer’s perception of the service provided.

Acknowledgment of the importance of these additional variables has led services marketers to adopt the concept of an expanded marketing mix for services.

 

Promotion:

Promotion is equally important to enhance the sales of the services as it is in the case of tangible goods. Service providers should put in all efforts to promote the products and bring them to the notice of the consumers.

 

A service provider can use any of the following techniques of promoting his services among the consumers – advertising, salesmanship, publicity, sales promotion, direct marketing, word of mouth promotion etc.

 

Word of mouth promotion is a very effective method which ensures high sales of the services. The type of promotion to be used in case of a service largely depends on the target customers. In case of services, post-purchase communication is very important in retaining existing customers and attracting potential customers.