Professional Services
Thought Leadership
Ideas and Outcomes: The Basics of Service Marketing
Companies that buy a service are looking for one thing—a predictable outcome. From a CPA firm, it’s an error-free audit; from a management consulting firm, it could be streamlined operations. From a 401(k) provider, it’s accurate recordkeeping … and happy employees. Corporations want successful trials from law firms and brilliant candidates from executive search firms. You get the idea.
But there’s no guarantee you get the outcome. Because services are delivered by people, they don’t offer the predictability of products. That makes experience the key to the buying decision. Buyers want to know if a service provider has a track record of successful outcomes within a functional area, an industry or both.
How do you market experience? Certainly, the names of a firm’s clients are its most important asset. But those clients—and the services performed for them—are often confidential and cannot be used in marketing communications.
What can be used are the insights of the firm’s people, which reflect their experience. Intelligently applied to the trends, issues and concerns of the target market, insights become a key differentiating factor. This is the marketing of ideas.
JSB
