From the Field: Marketing Your Product, or Service, or Both?

Published On: January 14, 2016 | Categories: Advertising and Marketing, Field Marketing |

Customer Journey
As corporate marketers consider the rapidly changing customer journey, they know the impact a digital presence has on that journey toward product purchase. Today’s digitally educated and astute customers have done their research online, considered competitors and reviewed satisfaction sites, and now are ready to purchase your product or service and the experience you promise.

So, do they perceive this as a purchase of a product, a service, or both? The answer may determine whether their purchase is a transaction or the beginning of a long-term brand relationship.

While products are defined and tangible in their distinctive qualities, services are more personal, tailored, and able to flex and expand over the time they utilize your product or service – especially in today’s growing digital world.

Service now has multiple channels of meeting the customer’s needs. For one customer, it may mean a return trip to the retail place of purchase; for another, a visit to the corporate brand’s website or a review site; while another to a YouTube channel for DIY diagnosis and repair. Today’s customer journey favors service.

So, how are corporate marketers enabling their aligned local sales and service partners? They’re doing it in a number of strategic ways, including providing brand messages focused on service after the sale, the application of data and analytics from new digital touchpoints, or utilizing marketing automation platforms like Metis™ to provide service marketing opportunities that build out the brand promise.

Re-assessing the customer journey with all its opportunities to advance them to a purchase, and then to service, is more exciting and rewarding than ever. It’s an evolution for marketers that elevates the field marketing experience to an appropriate place in the value proposition – where “sold” moves corporate and local partner businesses forward.

If you’d like to discuss how SA can help address your business opportunities, please call Mike Schreurs at 888.898.6400.

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