“Service” Is A Big Intangible Product. So How Do You Market Your Service Business?

 

January 2022

You’re probably in a service industry. So am I. Most businesses are. If you’re a 

• Personal coach or trainer
• Marketer
• Spiritual teacher
• Professional trainer
• Motivational speaker
• Leader of a non-profit organization

  OR

• Electrician
• CPA
• Restaurateur 
• Medical practitioner
• Massage therapist
• Financial planner
• Plumber
• Carpenter
• Teacher 
• And the list goes on. . . 

You’re in a service industry.

The difficulty of marketing an intangible product

That makes a particular challenge for marketing, doesn’t it? There’s no “I can guarantee the results” like those who are selling factory-made widgets can. You can’t promise “this works every time!” 

Why? 

Reason 1: Each client you work with will have all kinds of variables they come with. 

Maybe they’ll give you accurate information. Or not.

Maybe they’ll do their part of the work in the relationship. Or not.

Maybe something in their lives changed since the last time you did business with them. They might have told you about that. Or not.

Reason 2: Your work likely includes a degree of artistic flexibility. It’s not as absolute as measuring the internal angles of an equilateral triangle in high school geometry. (They’re always 60º, remember?) Sometimes you do your service perfectly. Sometimes, not so much. 

For example, a landing page that gets a great response from one target audience will fail miserably for another one.  A program you offer for clients will get 5-star reviews from some and 1-star reviews from others. 

It can be discombobulating! You are tasked with selling a service that changes every time you do it.

Have no fear. It’s much simpler than you might think.

Andy, my plumber, does it quite naturally. 

I was living in the church parsonage–a house the congregation owns for the pastor to live in. It’s an older house, built in the late 1950s. Yep. With 1950s plumbing. 

I was new to town and had a problem when the bathroom sink clogged up. Hardware store cleaning products didn’t work. I called a plumbing company with a decent reputation. They weren’t considered too expensive. 

“C’mon honey. Loosen up,” he coaxed the pipe as he worked to take it apart. He continued to talk to “her” with all kinds of sexual innuendos. Finally, black sludge drained into the bucket. He scrubbed out the pipe and put things back together again.

“Is that clean enough?” he asked after he had washed the floor and walls with the black sludge he’d drained out of the pipes. Apparently he had been told to clean up when he was done.

I wanted him gone. 

“It’s fine,” I replied. I’d rather just wash it myself and do it right. 

The next time I needed a plumber, I called Jeff, the owner of a different plumbing business. One of his guys, Andy, knew about older homes and could be there the next day. 

Andy really does know older homes. He’s flipped some as side projects. But even more important than his skills, he understood being likeable, reliable, and honest. 

He was straightforward about what he could and could not do.  

He was humbly personable and we found common topics of conversation.

He showed up when he said he would. 

He even taught me how to do some basic plumbing fixes around the house so I wouldn’t have to call him every time something simple went wrong. 

Andy was my guy. I’d call Jeff to get on Andy’s calendar. “It’s not an emergency, Jeff, but if he can get here in the next few days, that’d be great.” He’d usually arrive that day or the next. 

Another time, “Andy, I replaced some faucets in the guest bathroom all by myself! I’d like to tell you how proud I am but, um, they don’t work. At all. Would you come and fix them?”

“Were there any parts left over?” he asked when he looked at the faucets the next day. He didn’t even laugh. What a nice guy.  

“Uh-huh,” I replied. I couldn’t help an embarrassed smile as I handed him those “extra parts.”

(Yeah, it’s true. I’m the kind of customer that lets plumbers go on great vacations.) 

Andy also remembered our conversations from one visit to the next. “Have you been up to Wisconsin lately?” “How did the mission trip go with the kids?” 

Naturally, he soon became the church’s plumber. Their plumbing was brand new in the 1950s, too. 

Andy was a little more expensive than some other plumbing companies in town. He was worth it. I liked him. He was great at doing the job and a wonderful man. I trusted him and wanted to do my business with him. 

Andy was a natural marketer. I doubt he’d ever own that, but every interaction we had reinforced I wanted to do business with him and the company he worked for. 

I bumped into something similar in my own professional life. I was among the early women to be ordained in my Lutheran denomination. (Talk about an intangible product.) 

There was little support for women clergy. I discovered, though, that if people liked me, it was okay for women to be ordained. 

If I showed up when I said I would, if they knew I cared about them, if they could see my faith was genuine and I could talk to them about real-world things–women could be pastors. 

The same works for you if you’re providing an intangible product. So, what are your clients really buying? 

You!

Let people know WHO they are working with

Harry Beckwith wrote a brilliant book called Selling the Invisible. It’s for all of us in the service industries–and even for those who are the face of service for manufactured products. 

One of his major points? People buy from people. They buy likability and trustworthiness. They buy a relationship that adds value to their lives. 

How do you work with that reality when marketing your service?

First of all, everything you do for your business is marketing. Hang with me here . . . “marketing” is just your way of letting people know you’re available to help them.

Every email, phone call, and blogpost is marketing. Every considerate listening to a complaint is marketing. Every time you listen to someone’s story and engage them genuinely, you are marketing. Every “like” and comment you make on social media is marketing. It’s always about developing relationships and trust.

Beckwith had a second interesting observation. “ . . . your prospect faces three options: 

1. 1. using your service, 
   2. doing it themselves, or 
   3. not doing it at all.” (p. 44).

It looks like . . . 

“Do I really need a life coach or can I just accomplish my goals on my own? Ah, maybe I’ll just do it later.”

And:

“Do I hire a specialist in writing marketing copy or can I do it myself? Or maybe I can build my business without it.”

Create and nurture a relationship with the people who are asking these questions. You can help them discover the gift of working with you. They can delight in the results.

Finally, Beckwith also makes the observation that real life is a whole lot more like high school than it is like college. As a woman with a Bachelor’s Degree from a Big Ten University and 2 Master’s Degrees, I have to swallow hard when I consider this.

Alas, I agree with him. In college I learned that knowledge and competence were the gold standard for professionalism and success.

In high school the more personality, well-rounded activities, and friendships a student had, the more others swirled around them and wanted to be connected with that popular person. Relationships were top-of-mind for most students.

Competence certainly has value. But knowing how to care for relationships will win out any day. You probably know professionals who are capable enough and are especially likable. They’ll get a lot more wiggle room than a colleague who might be better at the job but who is “difficult to work with.”

Everyday life definitely has a lot more high school dynamics to it than those of college life. 

YOU are the product, the service, people are buying. Caring for those relationships is the most powerful way you can let them see your value in their lives. 

Some questions to consider.

1. Do you have a good plumber?
2. What is something you’ve done that was out of the ordinary but being personable made it more acceptable?
3. Are you taking care of relationships with your current and prospective clients?    

 

I’m Carmala Aderman and actually, I’m pretty likable. I want to make the world better by helping those of you in the Professional Training and Coaching niche increase the number of clients you can support.  And I really like working with spiritual teachers and guides for the same reason–we need more Light in the world! 

If you would like to have a conversation about building your business so you can impact more people’s lives, contact me at Carmala@CarmalaAderman.com or here on LinkedIn.