Transcription
Hey, fellow marketers, Professor Wolters here. And today we're gonna start our topic on service marketing. Because what you have to realize is marketing of services like financial services, right, like selling your accounting services or your financial advising or, or educational services like a degree, they're very different than marketing a product. Because think about it, with a phone, I can market the speed, I can market that nice colorful screen, the pictures you can take. Oh, look, it plays the newest Angry Birds, right? You can talk about those kind of things, you can see those things. I can taste, taste it? Touch it, feel it, you can do all of those things with a product. But service is very different, and we have videos that will go through the differences between products and services.
But in general, what you have to realize is service is the driving force behind the US economy. It's over 75% of the US economy is driven by services, financial services, medical services, educational services, legal services, all those kind of things. That's what's driving the economy. That's why when the Coronavirus hit, you had all the crashes in the stock market, because people were no longer going out to buy services. I wasn't going to watch that movie, I didn't want to go to class, I didn't want to get up my- hit up my CPA to do my taxes, I didn't want to get out. And therefore, people were not going in using those services. So the impact on the economy was- it's like outstandingly horrible because of that, and the stock market reflected that, how it went down.
But the thing is, is when we're looking at marketing our services, we have to realize is when you're marketing your services, it's kind of like marketing retail, it's more about the experience. I mean, think about it, the service of going to an amusement park or the service they had going to Disney World, or Six Flags or something like that. It's not necessarily the ride itself. It's the feeling you get, it's the experience you have there. And so we have this issue that look, we got to get people to understand our experience of our service, so they know that our experience is better. Because think about it, if you look at education, I mean, there's a lot of universities now that are going online. Well, the thing is a lot of them are using the same textbook. So if they're all using the same textbook, should it be the same educational service every time? Well, no, there's the delivering of the education, right? That can be very different. And I'm sure a lot of you are taking online classes, and you're seeing that difference of having an online class versus a face-to-face thing. I know for me, the delivering of my service and my education to my students were usually right here with me. Mr. Caroline, miss you guys, hope you're doing okay. CJ, thinking of you, buddy. And what you end up having is it's a very different experience, right? And so the service is very different.
Because when you really think about it, a lot of it comes down to perspective. If we're looking at service experiences, I know I have friends of mine that are surgeons, right? And they'll do the exact same surgery on two different people. And then we're like, "Hey, I think this surgery went great." And one person is like, "Oh, this is awesome." The other person is like, "I'm going to sue you for malpractice, because my knee doesn't work as well." I mean, I've had doctors that go in like that this person can't walk. And they give them a new knee and like they can walk again, and they're like, "Thank you, doctor, this is wonderful, thank you so much." And other people, they can't walk, they give them a good knee. And they're like, "Oh, I expected I'll be able to jump super high again, and I can't so this service was bad." I mean, that's the thing, you're looking at service marketing. It's really hard to kind of compare those things. Look at you and your friends. I mean, how many of you have a favorite movie that your friends don't like? Again, marketing of movies of services and stuff like that can be very difficult. Because there's different perspectives, people have different kinds of ideas of their experiences.
So what ends up happening in service marketing, we start to focus more on customer relationships, necessarily than like a product kind of thing. Because, you know, you might identify with your Samsung phone, right, but or your iPhone or something like that, but it's the relationships you have in service marketing that gets you to go back. I go back to my same accountant, Anita, I love her to death. She's awesome, she's helped me out for years. And I go back to her because we have a relationship. I don't have to explain to her, well, you know, we traveled about 20 countries a year. So we have 20, different currencies, and all these kind of things. And of course, we have to do the tax deductions for the travel and this kind of stuff. She'll like, oh, I got it, no problem. Tell me the the number for that country, and what we'll figure it out from there, no problem. If I go to a new CPA, it's like, "Oh, you travel?" "Yeah." "Do you travel very much?" "Kind of." You start to see, it's like, look, I want to develop that service relationship. I want to have that because I go back. It's why when you look at your restaurant, you go back to your favorite restaurant. Why, is it the best food ever, maybe, but probably not the best food you ever had in your life. But you enjoy the experience when you're there and the relationships you have with people. And that's why service marketing would really focus on that.
Now if I look at kind of different types of service marketing, one kind of thing you probably you're used to seeing is what we call external service marketing. And this is when the company itself is marketing to their customers. We're talking about the price and the products we have, and the services we offer, and things like that. We're marketing these kind of things to you, the customer, right, and that's one of the traditional kind of marketing. The thing is you got to realize that service marketing isn't just for people outside. It's also for people inside, and you have what's called internal service marketing. Okay, think about it. Have you ever had a job that actually marketed to you? I know, for me during the football season where I work, the University markets to the professors and the staff, "Hey, why don't you come to the football game this weekend?" "Hey, we can get you cheap tickets." "Hey, 4 for $44!" They have all this kind of stuff with actually marketing to us. But I'm like, I already work for you, why are you marketing to me? Because sometimes you do want to do internal service marketing, letting people know, hey, we have a talk on retirement plan, hey, we have a talk on how to plan online classes. So they're actually marketing their services internally. I know one of my favorite internal marketing things is when companies are are marketing to students and stuff like that, or interns that come. And they have like big barbecues to make them feel like more welcome and stuff like that. That's what we're talking about this internal service marketing, we're just trying to show look, we're not just taking care of people outside the firm. We're also marketing to you inside the firm, hence why you have people going, I-L-L, I-N-I, yeah, we can do it together, let's go team! You have those kind of things, alright?
Now, there's also what we call interactive service marketing. This is when you're going to the store, and the customer is interacting with the employee versus the company doing its kind of promotion kind of stuff, its marketing kind of thing overall. This is actually that one on one. That's that personal selling kind of stuff, where you have the interaction between the client and the employee. And that's why it's really important that you train your employees, your service employees, how to deal with your customers, how to work with your customers. I mean, we travel a lot, and I've been impressed. I've seen some really pissed off people at the airport, and the Delta agents. "Thank you very much, sir, I hope you have a great day. I'm sorry, we have these issues. How can I help out?" Like they're so calm, they're so cool, they're so chill. Even though people are like, Oh, I missed my flight, what's going on?" They're like, "Well, let's see what we can do, sir. Here we go. I can get you another flight to Atlanta." Like, and I'm like, dang, how do they do that? It's because they've been trained to interact with upset clients. And that really helps, because if you don't know what to do, it's like, I don't know what I'm gonna do here. It's like babysitting for the first time or having a kid for the first time. You're like, what do I do with this thing? I don't know, it's crying. I can't give it milk, I don't know what to do. You know, but you know, after a couple of kids, you're like, oh, yeah, the baby's crying. It's either one, it's got a dirty diaper. Two, it's tired, or three, it's hungry. So check, you know, like, oh, I got it now. Cuz I've been trained, my wife train me, my parents trained me, my kids trained me. You had that so you can have kind of better interactive service marketing.
So I hope this helps you understand overall, just like what service marketing is. It is the selling and marketing of educational services, financial services, legal services, medical services, any kind of services out there, you know, your garbage service, this kind of stuff. That's what it is. So I wish you all the best, and if you have any comments or question anything like that, leave in the comments section below. We really appreciate your comments, like, subscriptions, all that kind of fun stuff. And I wish you all the best, bye.