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So you have a great service and wanting to get the word out to the public about how you can help them? You’ve spent hours of planning, developing trusted systems that you feel work. You’ve hired the right technicians that you feel can provide the best service to your clients. All that is great, but now you just need business! This is where marketing comes in.

At first glance marketing and advertising look like the same thing, but there is a difference. Consider marketing as your comprehensive strategy in taking your product to market. Marketing is knowing your customers, and understanding what they want from a service like yours. Advertising is the process of making your service known within the marketplace. Marketing is the why and advertising is the how.

So how do you best market your service? I’d like to introduce you to the S.W.O.T template model to base your marketing strategy off of. Many of you may already be familiar with this model, but its always helpful to revisit and revise your SWOT strategy because your business grows and markets change. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Every business needs to understand their strengths, know their weaknesses and evaluate opportunities and threats.

Strengths
Strengths include what advantages does your business have? What do you do better than any other business in the area? Knowing this will give you the language and upper hand when it comes to selling your services to others. If you are one of 5 plumbers on the block, what makes your service stand out both externally and internally?

Weaknesses
Ask yourself what could you improve? What are the people in your market likely to see as weaknesses about your services? Thought this may be a hard piece to admit, we need to be realistic in being aware of what your weaknesses as a service are. Many businesses only want to admit how awesome they are and that they absolutely are the best. Come to find out, with a little thought, they have some serious loop holes needing to be filled in their service.

Opportunities
What are interesting trends that you are aware of? Can you spot any changes in government policies that might affect your market? Are there local events that you can capitalize on to offer your services? Use your strengths to take advantage an open up these opportunities to tap into your market and snatch up new business.

Threats
Many people overlook what their competition is doing, but its a key factor in positioning yourself for success. If your competition are charging more than you are, you might be missing out on expanding your budget by increasing prices. Look at what your competitors are doing, not to be like them, but to put yourself in the same playing field.

Using the SWOT analysis is only as good as you apply it to your business. Make sure you’re only using verifiable statements. You should be closely paying attention to your dollars and sense anyway! Keep things in perspective and prioritize what you and do and what you can’t do at the moment.

Maybe in the process you discover that you need help with marketing and advertising your service? Maybe your competition is getting ahead of you with a better, more attractive web presence that is attracting all your potential customers? If you need assistance, we would be happy to help! Just fill out the contact form below and someone from our staff will be in touch to discuss your needs!

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