How to sell services to a business
Strategy For Marketing A Service Based Business
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If you try to market your service based business just like any other business
you're going to be disappointed because service based businesses have a very
unique and really different approach that's required for success if you want
to generate more leads clients and sales. That's why in this episode, I'm going to
be sharing five things you absolutely need to know to have success marketing
your service based business. Let's get to it.
Hey there, my name is Adam Earhart, marketing strategist and welcome to The
Marketing Show, where we help you grow your business and generate more leads,
customers and sales by making way better marketing. So, if you're interested in
learning the latest and greatest marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks
and tactics, well, you may want to consider subscribing and hitting that
notification bell so you never miss a future episode. Marketing a service based
business is one of my favorite things to do because it provides all sorts of
different unique approaches and different challenges that marketing
product based businesses simply don't have. Specifically, the fact that you're
selling something intangible something that they can't see or feel or touch or
taste or whatever it is so we really have to get creative with our marketing
in order to paint a clear and compelling picture of why people should do business
with you. Plus, there's also a ton of trip wires or minefields or potholes or
whatever other analogy we can think of here, basically, all of these different
areas of disaster that so many different service businesses fall into when it
comes to their marketing, specifically the fact that it is an intangible thing
well they often grasp in sort of grapple for the right term and they end up using
generic and bland and boring statements like: "We provide better service" or "We
have higher quality" or "We do things faster", which are not only not
differentiated at all but they also make you sound exactly the same
as every single one of your competitors. So let's fix that now as well as all the
other issues and I'm gonna give you 5 of my absolute best service based marketing
strategies so you can apply them in your business and get way better results and
with way less headache. Alright, it all starts with tip number 1 which is
to sell the end. This is probably the single most important tip of this entire
video, actually maybe the second most important tip, I save the best one for
last so make sure to stick with me. You see, when it comes to service based
marketing it's literally all about the end result that you provide. That is
essentially the entire that you should be trying to sell and
communicate through all of your marketing and advertising material.
Basically, your business's marketing should talk about the benefits of what
your service provides, the end state that it's going to help your clients or your
customers get to and basically all of the ways that their life is going to be
better after having done business with you and basically all the ways that
their life would be terrible if they don't do business with you. You see, one
of the most important things you can do here is really clearly define the two
different states that your clients are in right now. Basically, the state that
they're in, they're present and active state which is pain and problems and all
the stuff they're trying to get away from and the state that they aspire to
get to which is their dreams and their wants and all that - cover that in just a
second - but essentially, they want to get away from pain they want to get to
pleasure and your business serves as the bridge that helps them cross that gap.
Alright, so more on the pain and pleasure stuff. Basically, I call this
miracles and miseries. Basically, their miracles are all of their wants and
their dreams and their goals and their aspirations. Basically, all the good stuff
that their life could be like after they do business with you and then their
miseries are all their pains and their frustrations and their fears and their
nightmares and all of the awful chaotic miserable stuff that has to do with
their everyday lives. I know sounds pretty negative but basically, when it
comes to marketing, what we're trying to do here rather than just beat them down
about all the bad stuff going on we do want to offer them a solution the
solution is your business which if you're any good at what you do - and I
presume you are - well, then you owe it to them to offer them the solution and help
them get away from the pain and into the pleasure. Alright, the next thing that
you really want to do as a service-based business is to definitely use stories in
all of your marketing. Again, because you don't have a tangible thing that they
can see and hold and feel and touch and smell all that stuff, well, you really
have to use stories which helps to build these models and build these images in
their minds. Again, as I already said it's not enough to just say stuff like we're
better or we're faster or we have better service or higher quality or whatever,
because these are just claims and they're basically based on nothing, so we
need to back it up. A great way to do that is with stories. If you've never
used stories in your business before, let me give you a couple examples here
but essentially what you want to do is sort of comb through a carefully
selected and curated list of your businesses success
and case studies and how you've helped customers or clients in the past and
you're gonna draw from this and use it as inspiration when you're creating
marketing content. For starters, don't be afraid to share your personal philosophy,
what you think about business or the industry or the market or basically what
you do. For example, my personal philosophy is that strategy should
always form the foundation of every single marketing campaign and I'm really
quick to point out that I disagree with a lot of the tactics and sort of flashy
and shiny object stuff that's going on in the industry
that's taking a lot of businesses way off the right path and making them
basically lose a lot of time and money and energy. Next, make sure to comb
through your database for client results testimonials and any case studies, which
are perfect examples to show how your business has helped people get results
before. These are really powerful because when someone sees someone that looks
like them or is in the same position as them and and they get results, it removes
a lot of the potential objections that they may have including the big one this
might not work for me. Also, while these next two are not necessarily part of a
story, you can intertwine story elements into them but creating how-to or what
not to do content is also a fantastic way to show your expertise and also
provide some value at the same time and of course when you are telling your
origin story or your personal story or what your business does and how it got
started, this part is important but remember, it's not about you it's about
them the client and the customer that you're trying to serve. This part might
sting a bit but your customers actually don't really care about you they only
really care about them and how they can use you in order to get the results. I
know that sounds horribly cynical but the reality is is that they really are
acting in their best interest, as they should, that's why we have a free market
so rather than fight this and think it's not fair and all that well it's better
to just accept it and design your marketing accordingly by making sure
that it's structured so that your marketing really is all about them and
less about you. Alright, the next step is that you need to nurture them. Now,
what this means is that essentially if you're selling a service to your market
well you're going to need to provide some kind of value or some kind of story
like we just talked about or some kind of content or authority stuff to put in
front of them and show that you know what you're talking about and you're the
right one for the job. If you're selling a really low price service, well, then
less of is going to apply but if you're selling
something in the thousands tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands
you're gonna need a whole lot of nurturing to make sure that you're
really clearly communicating that you are the best one for the job.
One of the biggest and most fatal mistakes I see, especially with service
based businesses who are brand new to advertising, is that they try to go out
there and they create an ad that goes direct to sale. Basically, they put it out
in front of people that is by now and they're selling something for thousands
and thousands of dollars. Probably, no surprise but the ad doesn't work and
then the business wears off whatever advertising platform they're using
whether Facebook or Instagram or Google or whatever. When in reality, the analogy
is pretty much like this is like proposing marriage on the first date.
Basically the person has no idea who you are or what you do or why they should
care and now you're asking them for a thousand dollar purchase there's a far
far better way to do this which I'm gonna cover in just my next point but
first it's important to understand that all of your marketing should always be
trying to increase touch-points. This is basically, interactions or moments of
truth where you're appearing directly in front of your target market and whether
through your content or your advertising or any of your marketing. Depending on
what statistic you read or what source you're referencing, the average is around
7/12 touch points with a customer before they make that purchase
decision. Basically, this means you've got to show up in front of your customers
with value between seven to twelve times before they're going to be willing to
buy from you. If you're selling a pack of gum or something for a couple bucks, well,
the touch points is probably just one and the offer could be as simple as:
Would you like some gum? Yes I would. But if you're selling a multi-thousand
dollar consulting package or something like that, you can't just say: Would you
like a multi-thousand dollar consulting package? No I would not. And of course,
they wouldn't, they have no idea what you do or why you're special or why you're
different or what kind of value you can provide and this is why you need that
nurture sequence and the way that you build out a nurture sequence is to
unleash the funnel. Basically, a marketing funnel is simply a process to walk them
through the customer journey from being cold traffic who has no idea who you are,
what you do, why they should care and basically, walks them through to becoming
warm, where they know you, they're starting to understand a little more and
all the way to hot, where they actually buy from you and become a paying client
or a customer. Now, the funnel I use inside of the business and with my
clients and students is called the social selling system. It's a very simple
framework that essentially takes them from an ad to a
opt-in page where they can enter their name and email in exchange for some kind
of content, then to a thank you page where we deliver the next step or
essentially make our next offer and then some kind of nurturing sequence on the
back end whether through email or retargeting ads. It's an incredibly
effective system and each step takes them closer to doing business with you
through a series of micro commitments and ever increasing value and basically,
increasing more and more touch-points. The beauty of this system and making
sure that you do have a funnel in place is that once it's dialed in you can
automate the entire process which means, it's like having thousands or millions
or tens of millions of tiny little salespeople out there all the time doing
business for you 24/7 365, generating leads converting them into clients and
nurturing them the whole process. Alright, the next tip and thing you really
need to be aware of and probably one of the most important things that I could
share with you is that you need to make sure that you avoid the marketing
wasteland. The marketing wasteland is scattered with dead companies and failed
marketing strategies and essentially this is why I'm pretty anti tactics and
shiny objects and really key on foundational strategy because far too
many businesses kind of bought into the notion or the idea that you need to do
everything and be absolutely everywhere, which is probably the worst marketing
advice ever. First of all, trying to do everything and trying to be everywhere
is probably one of the fastest ways to burn out an overwhelm that I've ever
heard of. I know this because I tried this many years ago and that's exactly
where it led me. Second of all, not only are you gonna be burned out and
exhausted and overwhelmed, it's also completely garbage strategy because your
clients and your customers and your ideal target market that you're trying
to reach, they're not everywhere, they're not doing everything, rather they're in a
few carefully selected channels and platforms so, why wouldn't you just go
there? So, how do you go there? Well, the very first step is to build out an ideal
customer avatar which is a representation of your most perfect
client or customer that you're trying to attract your business. You want to figure
out who they are, where they go and what they do and when you sort of figure all
these things out, all you then have to do is head over to google and type in a
quick search like social media network demographics and you'll be able to align
very quickly where your market is and what platforms are favored by that type
of person. Then, go there and ignore everything else. As a real rough in
general example, let's say you're trying to reach
between the ages of 35 and 55, well, then Google and the demographic details are
gonna basically tell us that Facebook and YouTube are probably your best bet.
If you're trying to reach women between the ages of 18 and 35 then you're gonna
want to double down on Instagram and possibly Pinterest, depending on your
business. If you're trying to reach corporate professionals in the B2B or
business-to-business space, well, then it pretty much doesn't matter what age they
are, LinkedIn should be at the forefront of
your strategy with maybe a supplementary or accessory channel backing it up,
probably Facebook. The important thing to avoid the wasteland is to not be
everywhere, not do everything, rather it's to clearly
identify your ideal target market who you're trying to serve find out where
they're active and present online and go there ignoring everything else. Alright,
the next thing you're gonna want to do is check out the video I have linked up
right here which is going to give you even more strategies on marketing your
service based business. So make sure to check that out right now. Thanks so much
for watching and I'll catch you next time on The Marketing Show
