Products and Services

The key marketing difference between products and services is the tangibility after payment, the belief that you are actually getting some thing at the point of sale. Product sales are a different psychology to a service; as you generally can’t modify the product to be exactly what you want as it’s already a processed raw material. You can however make it the closest to what you want and mentally you will be happy with your purchase as its fit for the purpose. Services are very different and are usually an experience based purchase. E.g. window clean, installing a power point, pool cleaning through to a car service. You can modify a service to be exactly what you want, nothing more and nothing less. Services lead generation generally leads to more phone call to see if you “can” provide the service and customize it to exactly what I want as opposed to, a close fit for purpose.

When marketing products vary services, products are generally describing with a picture and services are generally described as a feeling or sense of accomplishment in order to assist the customer with the satisfaction of getting exactly what they asked for.

Its critical to understand that during the planning and communication process all the factors and many more are taken into consideration. The customers’ experience needs to be made specifically clean, simple and address the areas of “what exactly does the customer want” and what can the business offer to the customer to give them the over riding confidence that the customer is making the right decision. The services industry is usually balanced in their offering by geographical location where as the products industry are determined by the particular market in the location. Having a strong mix of both in your business can greatly assist in lead generation and retention through branding.