7 BASIC SERVICE MARKETING CONCEPTS

Though marketing incorporates a broad set of concepts but you might have heard a lot about marketing mix discussed ubiquitously when someone talks about the basic approach to product marketing concepts.

Apart from widely known 4Ps, service marketing concepts encompasses three more elements that are crucial to your service business’ success and bring in more customers. The key elements of a successful service marketing concepts include:

Product

 

Unlike physical products, the products in service marketing are intangible. And since online marketing is a service, it is diverse in nature and your customers cannot own what they pay for. Therefore, you need to design your internet marketing services very carefully.

A service blue-print is developed to know how your product will be. For instance: You are providing SEO services to companies, you need to develop a clear operational plan how you will be providing services to your customers.

Price

 

Price is a key element in both product and service marketing mix because it is the value people are expecting to get in return of cost they have been charged. When you have a service blueprint you are specifying your customers what support you will be providing along with the service delivery framework and the estimated/expected experience they will be getting for the value for their money.

Place

 

In the case of services, place determines where your service product is going to be located. Like the best place to open a pharmacy is near hospitals, so that people can easily reach you to find medicine. But for services like online marketing the placement and location of your business don't really matter, you just need to focus that you are in reach of your clients.

Promotion

 

Once you know what service you are going to provide your customers with, what price you will be charging and what place you will start your business in, the next step is to bring yourself into the limelight and start promotion.

Be it a tangible product or a service product, there are various promotion methods available like newspapers, TV, radio, social media, internet marketing etc. that you can opt for considering your target market and your allocated promotional budget.

People

 

People are one of the marketing concepts for service marketing mix because they define what service is. For instance: If you are running a digital marketing agency, your SEO specialists, content marketers and digital strategists’ ability to meet your marketing goals define you. If you own a restaurant, your chefs and other staff define you because it’s your people who can make or break your business’ image.

Many companies nowadays are inclined towards staff’s skill training, so that you can deliver your customers with exceptional service.

Process

 

Have you seen how quick McDonalds and FedEx are? This is because they have streamlined the process of delivering service to their customers. Marketing concepts in service marketing relies heavily on processes because how you are delivering your service product is of utmost importance.

The process is also a key element of the blueprint, where before establishing the services, you need to define an optimized flow of processes to deliver the service and maintain consistency.

Physical Evidence

 

One of the last marketing concepts element is physical evidence. However, the impact of customer experience is doubled if a product is associated with your service marketing efforts. At times, physical evidence is a differentiator. Think of a restaurant with good food and good seating arrangement and another restaurant with good food, seating arrangement, and ambiance. Which one will you prefer? Definitely, you will go for the one with good ambiance right? That is the physical evidence of your service. Like a saloon having well-trained staff and the well-designed interior is offering something extra to customers.

WHY CONTENT? Have You Ever Asked This Question to Yourself When Designing a Website?

Whether you currently own a business site or intend to launch your very own website/blog there a bundle of things to consider; from website design, SEO to your website content because everything has a major impact in generating leads.

Let’s talk about content marketing today assuming your web designer is taking care of the design elements.

Customers are constantly on the lookout for quality content; material that helps them, solves their problems. Marketers believe the content is King because it is what a customer wants.

Here a more reasons why content is considered a crucial element.

UNDERSTAND WHAT IS CONTENT?

If you’re not digitally savvy (a common individual), the idea that hits your mind when asked about content is text.

But the definition of content in digital terms includes not only text. Your pictures, images, videos and audios anything that is serving a purpose and delivers a message is content.

PULL PEOPLE

Have you heard of pull marketing strategy and how it works? It is all about how perfectly the product is being marketed, promoted, advertised, placed and positioned in mind that people ask for it.

Similarly, when you are writing your website content, it must have a power to grab attention and capture mind of its readers. That’s how your website is positioned in your audience’s mind and once you’ve successfully enabled them to subscribe to your new offerings or compelled them to purchase a product, your content has that ability to convert leads into customers

KNOW WHAT YOU SHARE

It is true that whatever you write has a degree of importance and your audience never wants to be bundled-up with excessive information. Creating a smart content that communicates your message, serves the purpose and answers the question can do the job better than a lengthy content that perhaps, can bore a reader (people are often frustrated when they see length of content and they might switch your website before even getting to read).

While your website’s content is crucial element in turning leads into customers, we cannot overlook the importance of SEO and design elements too. This is why it’s essential to never get obsessed with the content so much you forget about other elements.

More tips on website deigning on these blogs. Check them out.

http://www.glu7.com/blog/

http://wix.com/blog

http://blog.squarespace.com/

How to Gauge The Effectiveness of Infographics as a Great Marketing Tool?

Infographics provide a visual representation of accumulated data and information in an easy and understandable form for readers. It is a fact that human eye perceives a visual much faster than normal text. Appealingly designed infographics draw instant attention of readers. The word ‘infographic’ has been basically derived from ‘information’ and graphics’ which means the combination of these two is favorable for engaging huge amount of audience in reading the visual content.

The popularity of infographic content is ever increasing as in just 2 years, its search volume has increased by 800 percent.

Here are some of the authentic reasons that truly measure the core significance of infographics as a remarkable marketing tool:

• Captivating for readers
• Instantly perceived by human eyes
• Ability to get viral
• Social media friendliness
• Powerful content marketing strategy

Captivating for readers

It is one of the prime reasons for infographics to captivate the attention of readers. This visual representation has a power to engage huge amount of audience by its impressive appeal. From a marketing perspective, it is also good to use infographic as it helps increase more conversion.

Instantly perceived by human eyes

Human eyes have a tendency to perceive and understand visual content than simple plain text content. Visual content influences the human brain much faster than normal words. It is a fact that visually appealing information is easily understood and remembered as compared to non-visual information for readers.

Ability to get viral

Infographics are able to get viral by their eye catching data representation for readers. It creates more traffic and conversion.

Social media friendliness

Infographics are extremely social media friendly with quick content virality. The visual data is well-researched and gives enormous information in an entertaining format.

Powerful content marketing strategy

Infographic is a powerful content marketing strategy as it helps promote content to readers in informal and appealing way. It also helps increase huge traffic and conversion optimization. This strategy is always beneficial to boost informative content to readers.

Infographics make up only piece of this marketing mix puzzle. There are various other elements in content marketing a digital marketing professional should know. Check out those other elements in these blogs

wix.com/blog

glu7.com/blog

Useful DIY On-page and Off-page Hacks to Improve Your Landing Page

The first rule in augmenting the efficiency of conversion path is to improve the quality of your landing page. It seems like a simple task but optimization of that one page actually requires lots of thinking and planning. 

Fear not; to optimize this lander there are two major areas where you will have to focus: on-page (the design) and off-page (the promotion).

If you are here looking for on-page and off-page hacks that will help you enhance the productivity of your landing page, read on.

On-page Factors

· Keep the design neat and free from clutter.

· Use the text, images, buttons and videos in best manner.

· Urge the users to interact and take action.

· Keep your landing page precise.

· Optimize your internal linking.

Here’s another hack for on-page if have no clue how to start with the steps listed above. Use a free website making tool like Wix, Weebly, GLU7 or Square Space and pick one from their given templates. This will ease your efforts and also give you a head start.

Off-Page Factors

· Apply the science of search engine optimization to garner more views and increase organic traffic.

· Make use of email marketing to contact subscribers and readers.

· Utilizing tools of search engine marketing

· Initiating pay-per-click campaigns for more visibility

· Using social media like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to reach out to millions of social network users.



A successful conversion will require excellent use of both on-page and off-page optimization techniques. So it's crucial you don't rely on just one factor. 

How to optimize inbound marketing online?

Inbound marketing means welcoming customers to your premises, instead of going out and aggressively targeting them. It is an essential part in marketing mix and thus should never be underrated, let alone ignored.

Inbound marketing works better for incoming customers because it gives them a true taste of your brand. They’re eager to know and that is why you should always s be ready for their arrival and armed in the best manner to entertain their queries.

Here are some tricks to optimize your website and thus your inbound marketing.

Take notes and put them to use

Take notes of customers. Note the path(s) which brings them to your site. Once you’ve noted, optimize that path with content that attracts, helps, solves their problems and delivers value.

Integrate a Blog

The safest bet. Visitors who have found their way to our blog are probably there because they have been looking for something and now feel that your site may have it. Every single one of those happy visitor will remember your page and will refer others facing the same problem should a situation arise.

So be sure to keep the blog updated with new and engaging content that attracts, holds, engages and captures the loyalty of your customer.

Optimizing and Simplifying Visitor's Path

Optimize every page in the conversion path. Landing page, order confirmation and thank-you pages are some that can be optimized for a better conversion rate.

Improving Load Speed

Customers tend to get furious when they see loading pages. They want a smooth and quick experience. And why not, they have better things to do. So keep your loading speed optimum. Consult with your IT team if you have to, to make pages faster without having to cut-down on valuable content.

Incorporating Share Buttons

Satisfied customers become brand evangelists. They can’t wait to share their experience with others. So making them wait is going to be a big letdown. 

This unnecessary inconvenience can be easily avoided by just integrating the sharing buttons on the pages of your website. Buttons like facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus allows user to spread the word with just a couple of clicks. It also lets you in on potential leads. 

With a website builder like Square Space or GLU7, these elements can be easily integrated, but even if you are using custom content management system, be sure to add these elements in your website to heighten your number of visits and your conversions.