We’ve previously written about how to use content, email, social media, and marketing automation for product launches. However, what do you do if you are an accountant, lawyer, creative agency, or recruiter? In such cases, you are not launching a new product; rather, you are trying to introduce a new service. Should you think about the process in the same way, or do you need to take a different approach?

Today we want to tackle this question of online marketing strategy for professional services firms. Whilst B2B and B2C marketing are not as different as some people think, it’s important to look closely at where product launch and service launch strategies are similar and where they differ. And to discuss how professional services firms can best use digital marketing campaigns to launch or re-energise a service.

How To Think About Service Launches in Terms of a Product Launch

So, what can you learn from product launch strategies when using digital marketing to promote your professional services? What elements are the same?

Whether you are launching a product or service, each strategy has the following steps in common:

Defining Your Launch Goals

Is the point of your campaign to establish or change how prospects (or existing clients) perceive your brand? To create a buzz around your new good or service and increase awareness within your target market? Are you trying to set your new service apart from competitors’ offerings? Or get a specific number of clients to sign up within a set period from the launch date?

Defining what you want to achieve and setting measurable indicators of success is a critical part of building out your launch strategy.

Establishing a Target Audience

Start by analysing your existing client base for core audience segments. You can identify these groups using marketing and sales automation tools to mine your CRM database for useful intelligence.

In particular, look for clients and accounts who would benefit from converting to the new product or service. You might also want to target known early adopters who are interested in exploring new options. Or existing brand advocates who are likely to spread the news of your latest offering to their network. 

Mapping the Customer Journey

No launch plan survives first contact with the customer. You can have the most amazing vision in mind for how you will lead people through your launch sequence. But in reality, prospects will wander off your pre-determined journey and take unexpected detours before deciding.

Your job as a content marketer is to act as a digital way maker, mapping out potential points of contact throughout the decision-making process. You can’t know if prospects will go from point A to point B or skip to point X before circling back to point C. However, a customer journey map provides an educated model to help you gently shepherd prospects towards the desired goal.

Brainstorm potential points of contact, such as press releases, search engines, webinars, landing pages, email marketing, paid ads, referrals, blog posts, etc. If possible, loop in any data you have available from similar service launches from the past to help evaluate and prioritise your ideas. You want to ensure that each touchpoint engages the prospect and provides them with the information they need to proceed regardless of order.

Creating a Personalised Customer Experience

Creating an outstanding customer experience entails talking to each prospect on an individual level — demonstrating that you understand their specific interests and needs. Give your launch the edge by using a marketing automation platform to employ hyper-personalisation techniques. For instance, dynamic content delivery based on audience segmentation and deep behavioural insights. Weaving this understanding into every touchpoint along the journey will take your launch content to the next level.

Evaluating Strategy Performance

After launch day, assess performance data to determine whether you are seeing the desired results. Are your target clients converting? What type of feedback are you receiving? Have you uncovered any content gaps that need to be filled? Are you meeting or exceeding your initial sales targets?

Take the time to resolve any issues you encountered during your initial launch. Tweak your targeting and hone your messaging until you are happy with the results. Then you can expand your launch strategy.

Should You Think About Product and Service Launch Strategy in the Same Way?

There certainly several elements product and service launches have in common. Indeed, many marketing articles treat them as the same thing, with titles like ‘X Tips for a Successful Product or Service Launch’.

However, there are also distinct differences between physical products and professional services. The two can diverge in customer expectations regarding ownership, delivery, customisation, relationship, time, and value. For example:

• Professional services are ‘credence goods’ — the buyer has to place their faith in the vendor.

• Professional services aren’t like cameras/sofas — you can’t go to a showroom and try before you buy.

• Buyer uncertainty is a marketing issue that needs to be addressed.

Lumping product and service launches under the same marketing strategy goes against the core B2B marketing precepts of relevance and specificity. In using the same approach to launch a service as you would a product, you end up overlooking key challenges unique to each audience. It is the difference between selling someone a car (a product) and getting them to sign-up for a ride share app (a service). Yes, both audiences are looking for a transportation solution, but they each have different concerns and expectations.

What Elements Are Different in Professional Services Marketing?

Services are intangible. You are essentially selling yourself or your idea. The primary goal of service marketing is to create good relationships with your target audience. To build and maintain trust. So, how should this alter your content development and launch strategy?

Differentiation

Unlike product-based businesses, professional service providers can not depend on shiny bells and whistles to create a competitive distinction. Mostly, clients simply do not care — many other businesses offer comparable services.

Instead of the ‘what’ of your service offering, prospects are more interested in the ‘how’ of what it is like to work with you. And this is how you can use your digital media to stand out from the crowd.

Content can help decision makers to establish whether you are a good fit. Talk about your ideas, expertise and company culture and emphasise attributes you know your customers value. Discuss your specialisations, for example, if you are an architectural firm who focuses on eco/sustainable design or a social firm that specialises in recruitment. Highlight these points in your content. You can also discuss your brand values, the way you operate and how you collaborate with clients.

Education

Rather than trying to persuade your audience, strategically designed content for a service launch focuses on educating them. What kinds of questions are your prospects asking? What topics do you need to teach your audience about so that they can fully understand the value of your service? Social listening, customer service records, and market research are invaluable for gathering this type of information. 

Some examples of service launch content might include:

• How to know when they should seek professional services.

• How to evaluate different providers and decide on a supplier.

• How to communicate their concerns, needs, issues.

• What they can realistically expect from providers.

Compassion

All too often, B2B marketers use logos as the be-all and end-all mode to appeal to their audience. They create content filled with facts and statistics to engage prospects on a purely rational level. But B2B buyers are people, not automatons. Ethical and emotional concerns still influence their decisions.

So, to establish a strong relationship with clients, you also need to connect on a human-to-human level. This means showing compassion and empathy. Showing that you understand their business issues and all the difficulties they face in sourcing professional services. That you share a passion for the industry and can relate to their trials and tribulations.

Expertise

As a professional services firm, you need to demonstrate your experience. Not just in your area of specialisation, but also that of your target industry. You need to show that you have a deep understanding of how your services apply to their circumstances.

As with product development, it is helpful to get input from industry stakeholders throughout the service development process to maximise your content’s impact. For you and your marketing team to have meaningful conversations with a range of other professionals in various fields. Collaborating and cross-pollinating ideas helps you develop a more nuanced understanding of what you can offer different industries. So that you have both breadth and depth of knowledge to share with your audiences.

Professional services firms often hesitate over the role of individual people from their firm in promoting their services. Conventionally, thought leadership comes from the firm as if it were a kind of institution rather than from real people. On social platforms—including LinkedIn—there is a greater expectation that real people become established as thought-leaders. Readers respond better to actual people sharing their thoughts and opinion. It’s now more acceptable (even necessary) that leaders and other employees in a firm share their excitement and pride in what their company has to offer and how it helps its customers. The voice of the professional services brand is increasingly the voice of its people. On LinkedIn, our advice is usually to use the company page to speak ‘from the firm’ but to encourage employees at every level to establish their presence and thought leadership in their personal timelines by putting more of their own interests and personality into what they post and how they share company-created content.

Relationship

Your service launch strategy needs to centre on building a relationship through close communication and engagement. An important part of doing this successfully is realising that B2B buyer expectations have shifted dramatically in recent years. Instead of wanting to talk with sales specialists, decision-makers expect a self-led customer journey. You need to create content and touchpoints across multiple channels to deliver a simplified and personalised digital-first experience.

An important part of creating this self-led customer journey is using marketing automation software to implement dynamic social marketing and email marketing strategies. This helps ensure that the right content is delivered at exactly the right moment, instead of forcing prospects to look for information. In addition to inbound tactics, the strategic use of online advertising and retargeting also play a key role in keeping your service launch top of mind.

However, most B2B buying journeys require more than a completely hands-off approach. You just need to know when to initiate contact and develop a more personal relationship with marketing qualified leads.

This is an area where sales automation software really shines. It can notify your sales team when someone is ready for personal cultivation by tracking prospect behaviour, content consumption, and lead quality scores. These lead profiles help your sales reps have a better understanding of a prospect’s needs and interests when they reach out personally.

Expert Help for Professional Services Marketing

The process for launching a new product versus a new service is similar. However, some key differences in strategic content creation must be addressed. When a brand launches a new product, there is an actual object the audience can interact with. However, with a service launch, what people are interacting with are your digital assets and your team (via social media, service channels, and sales reps).

Successful service launch marketing depends on delivering quality, personalised content, no matter where prospects are in their journey. Your content needs to differentiate, educate, empathise, and demonstrate expertise to your target audience so that you can start forming a connection.

1827 Marketing can help you plan, create, and implement a successful digital marketing strategy for your service launch. Find out how our marketing automation tools bring everything together to enable the self-led buyers’ journey and nurture relationships. Book a demo now.