Marketing services is a specialist branch of advertising. Marketing services evolved as a separate discipline of advertising in the mid-1980s, following the realization that the distinctive characteristics of online services demanded different approaches than that of physical merchandise. Just like brochures and other printed ads, online marketing has changed over time. Initially the service’s marketing was confined to flyers, billboards and advertising banners. However, as the use of the Internet grew, services marketing began targeting aspects related to web content production. As this area has developed quite rapidly, services have branched out into areas such as SEO content writing and website development.
Most successful marketing campaigns are those which provide services which require a high degree of active participation by the customer. The best marketing mix involves active engagement from both parties. This is usually defined as involving your target audience in the process of creating the marketing mix. This requires a high degree of active involvement from the consumer.
One aspect of services marketing mix that many people do not consider is the involvement of stakeholders within the creation of the promotional literature. Stakeholders, also known as supporters, can include universities, lecturers, boards of directors, and various other individuals. They provide inputs in terms of ideas, comments and suggestions, which need to be incorporated in your promotional campaign. They can be very influential in ensuring that your message is communicated clearly and effectively.
Various types of stakeholders exist. For instance, you could have a customer support representative who provides advice to your sales staff, helps design brochures, does case studies and other tasks. Alternatively, there could be an integrated marketing communication officer who will conduct case studies, integrate your online information with the offline information and assist with many other tasks. Finally, there would be a customer service manager who manages and coordinates the activities of all these different people.
When it comes to using visuals for your promotions, the most common way to do so is to display photos on web pages, in blog posts, in company blogs, and in PowerPoint presentations. However, videos are becoming increasingly popular. Video is especially useful for promoting new services and products. This form of promotion has several advantages. In this article we will describe how you can use video for your services marketing mix.
First, videos are much easier to distribute than written content, including case studies in PowerPoint or PDF documents. Second, they are a great complement to your other promotions as they provide the opportunity to talk about your services in a more personal way and to illustrate how customers will benefit from engaging in your services. Finally, they are an effective way to build customer expectations around the benefits of engaging in your services. You can demonstrate, for example, how engaging in our services will help your business grow to the next level by building customer relationships. In addition, you can show how customers can get a variety of additional services and features as well as an increase in productivity. Lastly, you can show how customers can get in touch with technical support and other important information that they might need.
If you do decide to use video for your services marketing mix, one of the keys is to create a course project or assignment (often called a SWOT analysis) that will be able to stand out from the other assignments in your class. One way to do this is to compare the videos you are producing in your video production department against similar courses in your teaching department. The SWOT analysis should compare the strengths and weaknesses of your course project relative to the other assignments. For example, if you are using an online course on Customer Service and you notice that students completing the same course see very little difference in their performance across all tests, you may want to consider making a short course (a.k.a. a peer evaluation course) that will allow you to track individual student performance. This type of information can help you make the decision to use video in your services marketing mix.