The Best Marketing a Service Business Can Do
We talk a lot about marketing within business. How do you market yourself? How do you position yourself? What will differentiate you? Marketing a service business can be a challenge.
There are many answers to these questions, and the scope is more complex than a simple blog post on a website. But if you’re on this particular website, you likely run — or work at — a service business. Perhaps you’ve even read our guide to kickstarting marketing in field service. But in a service business, one of the major differentiators is, well, the service. More specifically, it’s a combination of the service and the people providing the service. In your case, it would be the technicians of whatever business you run (HVAC, electrical, computer service, plumbing, etc.)
You probably know all of the above already. None of that should be new, per se. But now the question is: How do you drive service quality up (the best form of marketing) and make more money in the process? That’s the ultimate 1-2 punch of goals in a field service business.
Despite what your technicians may tell you (sorry team), marketing is very much their job. In fact,it’s everyone’s job. But the only way technicians can be effective at the marketing side of the business is if their time is managed properly. Technicians are the connection between what you want your company to represent and what the client recognizes your company to represent.
Consider these two scenarios:
A technician arrives late for an appointment and lacks the right information about the customer and/or tools to do the job.
A technician arrives five minutes early with all the information and everything necessary loaded in the truck.
In bullet point No. 1, the technician is frazzled — and now has to run back to HQ or a warehouse in order to do the job successfully. There will be no sales, marketing, up-selling, or even retention or referral in this situation.
In bullet point No. 2, the technician is ready to work before the appointment even begins — and all of those other elements around marketing and sales have the potential to take place.
These are two polar-extreme examples of field service work, yes, but at many points in between these two points, technicians are either maximized time-wise or always feeling like they must catch up. This isn’t good for your clients, or for your employees’ work-life balance. If you’re worried about retention (like every service company ever), then you might want to start thinking about those little buzzwords.
So, here’s where we stand.
The best marketing is high-quality service being provided by your techs.
For that to happen, your techs’ time needs to be managed properly.
When that happens, you will make more money.
How do you get to this place?
One of the best ways is field service software, (fsm software, for short) which integrates the different aspects of your business together. (Think inventory, customer information, data, scheduling, invoicing, and more.) With an integrated fsm software, schedules become more optimized. First-time fix rate goes up. Your marketing plan — better service — works like a charm.
But, of course, this FSM software is going to cost you something. It’s not free.
How will you know it’s profitable in the end? Where is the ROI?
For that, simply download this eBook now. We walk through 10 profit-growing benefits of FSM software. (One of the 10 is tied to marketing, yes.)
