Service businesses need to be able to retain existing customers and attract new customers by building trust through variety and promotions. There are many ways to promote services. Some companies use no more than one strategy, while others may use a range of methods to achieve different marketing goals. Regardless of the size of your business or range of services, strong advertising strategies should help your company to strengthen your position and stand out from the competition.

Of course, many service businesses are small (for example, repair shops or hairdressers) and do not use formal promotion methods. There are also a huge number of companies in the professional business services (B2B) market, such as accounting and law firms, for example, who still think that it is unprofessional to use marketing in their practice. Despite this, you should understand that modern tendencies cannot be ignored. It is necessary to build business plans and formulate ways to implement them.

It is necessary to understand and clearly define the goals of promotion

The objectives of the marketing strategy should be aimed at consumers: customers, intermediaries, employees or competitors. After formulating promotion goals, you should understand which ones you will bet on. These can be personal selling, active online and offline advertising, promotions and discounts for sales promotion, PR or direct marketing.

When designing a strategy, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• how your services should be perceived by the consumer
• what quality will be added to the service
• when the campaign should start
• how long will it last
• what benefit do you expect
• and how your strategy will be differentiated from those of your competitors.

It is necessary to understand the importance of the interaction of internal and external communications of the company

Conducting regular audits of our own company, each time confirming our strengths and by identifying flaws and threats from the market, you will keep your finger on the pulse of the business. Before starting the promotion, it is important for you to understand the path of the advertising message from the company to the consumer, to take into account the possibility of its distortion. Some of the clients misunderstood something. Some of the staff didn't say anything. All this is the result of the organization of internal and external communications within the company.

After deciding on the purpose of promotion, it is necessary to bring them to the staff of the enterprise. Each employee must understand their tasks in the promotion strategy you are implementing.

It is necessary to clearly formulate a promotion strategy

Entrepreneurs sometimes complain about the difficulty in differentiating their services. Indeed, a dentist may wonder how he can stand out from other excellent dentists. In this situation, at first glance, a tempting idea may arise - I will compete on price. But often this option ends badly for the business, as competitors can jump into this game and cut their prices. An alternative to price competition is to develop the most differentiated commercial offerings, delivery methods, brand visuals and/or service quality.

Offering a unique selling proposition to the market

The client's expectations are based on a package of basic, basic services. You can add an additional service function to this. For example, a cafe may offer free internet access and comfortable sofas for patrons. Be innovative when creating related services.

Ways to provide services

A service company can become more attractive if it adapts to the needs of customers and changes its work schedule or methods of service delivery, for example. If there are complaints about the speed of service, it is necessary to change the technology of service.

Business branding

In-depth interview a semi-structured personal conversation between the interviewer and the respondent in a form that encourages the latter to give detailed answers to the questions asked.

Distinctive features

The interview takes place in the form of a free conversation on a topic of interest to the researcher, during which the researcher receives very detailed information from the respondent about the reasons for his actions, about his attitude to various issues.

Technology

Preparing the Structure of the Conversation. Before starting a series of interviews, the researcher prepares a plan according to which the interview will be conducted. Unlike a regular survey, an in-depth interview plan is simply a list of questions on which the interviewer needs to get the opinion of the respondent.

Selecting respondents and conducting interviews. After preparing the interview plan, respondents are selected and the interviews themselves are conducted. The duration of an in-depth interview can be from half an hour to several (2-3) hours, depending on the complexity of the topic, as well as the number and depth of the issues being studied. As a rule, in-depth interviews are conducted in a special room with a neutral environment and good sound insulation, in order to avoid any external interference. The interview is recorded on audio and / or video equipment to facilitate subsequent interpretation and analysis of the data, and also in order not to lose important information.

Processing the results of the interview and compiling an analytical report. After the interview is completed, its audio and/or video recording is processed, as a result of which the researcher receives the full text of the entire interview. Based on these texts and the impressions of the interviewer, an analytical report is compiled.

Interviewers

The success of an in-depth interview largely depends on the professionalism and personal qualities of the interviewer. To conduct an interview, you need a qualified specialist, preferably with a psychological education. He must have the skills to establish contact with people, a good memory, the ability to quickly respond to non-standard answers, and patience. During the interview it is impossible to exert psychological pressure on the interviewee, to argue with him.

Application

As a rule, in-depth interviews are used to solve the same tasks as focus groups, namely:

• study of consumer behavior, their attitude to goods, companies, brands;
• development of new products, evaluation of the concept of a new product (its packaging, advertising campaign, etc.);
• obtaining preliminary consumer reactions to various marketing programs.

An in-depth interview should be used instead of a focus group in the following cases:

• the topic of the interview involves the discussion of purely personal topics (personal finances, diseases);
• interviews are conducted with representatives of competing organizations who do not agree to discuss this topic in a group;
• a topic is discussed in which there are strict social norms, and the respondent's opinion may be influenced by the response of the group (paying taxes, etc.);
• it is impossible to collect all respondents in one place and at one time (the respondents are small, distant from each other and/or very busy).

Advantages and disadvantages

Main disadvantages methods of in-depth interviews are associated with the difficulty of finding interviewers. First, conducting in-depth interviews requires skilled professionals who are not easy to find. Further, the quality of interview results is strongly influenced by the personality and professionalism of the interviewer. And, finally, the complexity of processing and interpreting the data obtained during the interview, as a rule, requires the involvement of psychologists for their analysis.

Advantages. Through in-depth interviews, you can get more full information about a person's behavior, about the reasons for such behavior, his deepest motives, which is not always possible in a focus group, where respondents put pressure on each other and it is difficult to determine who exactly gave this or that answer.

Any enterprise is interested in the maximum level of liquidity of its products. But to have steadily growing sales in an ever-changing market is not easy. To withstand the onslaught of competition and timely respond to new trends, you need high-quality analytics.

Why marketing research is relevant

To begin with, it is worth noting the fact that this function (analytics, research) is one of the key tasks of the marketing department. At the same time, the research process itself should be understood as the collection of information related to the activities of the company. The data that was obtained should be evaluated within several key areas (promotion, product, buyers, price). The conclusions obtained as a result of such a study help to determine the most relevant direction for the development of the enterprise as a whole and its individual elements in particular. A competent and correct strategy is extremely important for the stable growth of the company.

It should be understood that such a marketing analysis - these are not always time-consuming and complex studies, in the process of which significant resources are involved. Many medium and small firms can get reasonably accurate analytics at relatively low cost.

Determination of goals

Before proceeding with the collection of information necessary for a qualitative analysis, it is necessary to set specific objectives. In other words, marketing analysis methods are focused on certain tactical or strategic goals. The depth and scope of the research being conducted depends on which direction will be chosen as a guideline.

The goals set determine the form of the analysis: it can be descriptive, used to develop predictions, or identify causal relationships. The result of such work is the formation of a hypothesis, which can be characterized as an assumption concerning the essence and ways of solving the phenomena considered.

The working hypothesis should provide the following indicators:

• testability of a reliable scientific assumption;
• its predictability;
• the ability to express key assumptions not only through logical conclusions, but also in the form of economic and mathematical constructions.

Research program

This term should be understood as a plan developed in order to get answers to the questions that the marketing analysis system includes. It allows you to link the material, time and other types of resources allocated for the implementation of the task.

The research program (plan) makes it possible to establish a system of indicators and determine a set of tools, as well as the information needs that are needed to obtain it.

Search for secondary information

Marketing analysis involves the study of two types of data: secondary and primary.

Secondary information refers to data that was previously collected for other purposes, but is still relevant in the format of the current study. As a key advantage of information of this type, one can determine their availability and low cost.

But such material also has disadvantages: since this information was collected to solve a different problem, its content is not always relevant. In other words, secondary information often turns out to be incomplete, outdated, not directly related to the current purpose, and unreliable.

When conducting a marketing analysis of an enterprise, the following sources can be used to obtain secondary data:

• bulletins of various organizations;
• mass media;
• statistical collections;
• websites of competing companies;
• publications by consulting and research firms;
• sectoral and thematic information resources;
• internal reports of the enterprise conducting the study;
• survey of company employees;
• information received from consumers, etc.

After collecting all the information of a secondary nature, it is necessary to conduct a thorough analysis of them and identify those that are most relevant for solving the current problem. The work with secondary data is completed with the final report.

Collection of primary information

Regarding the topic of primary data, it is worth noting that marketing research includes the collection of information in this category when secondary information was not enough. At the same time, it is necessary to be able to collect information of the primary type, since in the CIS conditions it is rather difficult to gain access to industry and company information. Moreover, professionals have to deal with the lack of culture and developed marketing infrastructure in the country. In addition, many companies have not had time to accumulate such valuable experience in the use of marketing strategies.

Data collection methods

In the process of searching for primary information, three main tools are used:

1. Experiment method. In this case, the information that a full-fledged marketing analysis requires is obtained by evaluating cause-and-effect relationships. During the experiment, one or more variable parameters are changed, after which the effect of the change on another element is recorded. An experiment should be understood as a field study with a change in specific parameters in a real market, as well as an artificial simulation of a specific situation. The value of this technique lies in the fact that with its help it becomes possible to determine the reaction of various groups of people, including potential buyers, to specific factors and their subsequent changes.
2. observation method. This method of obtaining data can be described as one of the most cost-effective and affordable ways to collect information. Its use is relevant in the case when the impact on the respondent should be minimal. The essence of the observation itself, within the framework of achieving the goal of marketing analysis, is reduced to a descriptive study of data, during which the actions of the respondent are recorded without direct contact with him.
3. Survey. This method of obtaining up-to-date information is one of the most common and universal. In this case, the marketer contacts directly with the respondents, with the goal of finding out their mood, opinion and specific facts. The survey can be conducted through questionnaires, telephone conversations or through personal contact.

Qualitative Research

Marketing analysis also implies a type of information gathering, during which answers to the questions "why" and "how" are given. In this case, information is collected regarding the behavior, attitudes and opinions of a specific small group of people. The collected data, as a rule, is not quantified, but allows you to get a clear understanding of the way of thinking of the representatives of the target audience of a particular manufacturer.

Such information is especially relevant when developing brands, advertising campaigns and a new product line. Qualitative research also helps to study the image of enterprises in detail. The main methods of such data collection include protocol analysis, in-depth interviews and focus groups.

In-Depth Interview

Considering the conduct of marketing analysis, it is worth paying more attention to this type of communication. This term should be understood as a semi-structured conversation with the respondent, which has a form that stimulates him to give detailed answers to questions raised by the interviewer.

A distinctive feature of this method of obtaining data is a free style of conversation on a topic that is relevant to the specialist conducting the study. In the process of such a conversation, a lot can be obtained from the respondent. useful information regarding his personal attitude to a particular brand, the reasons for buying a product and not only.