Service marketing can be defined as a cluster of operational activities that seek to investigate, obtain and serve the demand of customers looking for a particular product or service.
In practice, they are actions that analyze, plan and implement attitudes to meet customer needs. The fundamental objective of this method is to help a sale with a set of efforts that will delight the customer, differentiating your business from the competition. It is a tool that interacts with all areas of the company, which helps to generate more revenue and improve the relationship between it and the customer.
What Is The Relationship Between Service Marketing And Customer Behavior?
Before analyzing the target audience and studying their behavior, no action within a marketing strategy should be taken. Thus, it is possible to make decisions that match your customers’ expectations and bring the expected objectives with the campaign.
This will differentiate your business from the competition and generate credibility. In services, we analyze consumer preferences and behaviors to improve delivery to the final public. We use marketing and communication techniques to avoid marketing mistakes your company cannot make and to meet customer expectations and solve their problems.
What Is The Importance Of Using This Strategy In Your Company?
Many managers need to see the importance of marketing and believe it is limited to distributing pamphlets, sending emails, building websites, creating advertisements, etc. However, marketing is a very complex area with several constantly evolving aspects.
The existence of competition between companies made it essential to use different marketing tactics to guarantee their space in the market. Good service marketing planning generates direct and immediate positive impacts on the company. As soon as it is applied, there is greater visibility in the market, new opportunities will arise, and there are more chances that potential sales will materialize. For this reason, it is important to use this strategy in the business, as it improves the organization’s overall performance.
What Characterizes The Services?
To better understand how this type of marketing works, it is necessary to start with the characteristics of the services that differentiate them from the products in the consumer relationship. See below what these qualities are.
Intangibility
This quality concerns everything that cannot be touched. This means that services cannot be downloaded, viewed, or tried on before purchase.
The customer will only be aware of the quality of the service when it starts to be provided, which creates uncertainty in hiring. This problem is overcome by taking actions to build trust with your audience, such as:
- improve the quality of the material used in the service;
- refine the visual identity — elements such as logo, website look, and slogan;
- improve communication and service.
This brings more security, firmness, and materiality to your services, increasing the chances of sales conversion.
Heterogeneity
Unlike products, there is a degree of variability for each service provided. This is because the service is performed by different individuals, in addition to the fact that the emotional state of the professional can impair the quality.
To ensure the lowest variation in services, you can invest in good training, hire talent — people with the ideal profile for your business — and increase your employees’ satisfaction, as their satisfaction with the company is reflected in their performance.
Perishability
Like products, services cease to exist in a certain period, but their perishability is linked to the impossibility of being stocked, which can harm the company’s earnings. For example, an airline that has yet to sell all the seats on a flight won’t be able to stock up to sell them later. Service costs will remain the same regardless of the number of sales.
Given this, perishability is related to market demand and supply, and the manager must adjust service costs according to customer demand. In the example of the flight, the company calculates its costs according to the average number of passengers.
Inseparability
While products are produced and consumed at different times, there is no way to separate these two moments in services. For example, when a student is watching a class of a course he has purchased, he consumes the service while the professor produces it.
This inseparability makes contact between the company and the customer closer, generating the need to develop a good relationship with the public during service provision.
Also Read: Data-Driven Culture: Why Adopt It In Your Company?