Services marketing
Are you looking to get more clients, increase your prices or offer a new service? If your services marketing strategy needs reviewing and you’re looking for a cost-effective and pragmatic approach from a services marketing expert then you’re in the right place.
Are you struggling to work out which service, revenue stream, geographical area or marketing channels are the best place to focus your efforts? Are changes in the external market forcing you to change your business model and rethink how you win business? And do you lack the in-house marketing expertise to create a marketing strategy and a cohesive marketing plan that maximises enquiries, converts more of these into customers and integrates sales and marketing into your organisational culture?
Over my 25 year marketing career I’ve worked with dozens of small service businesses, multi-site service providers and membership / subscriptions-based organisations. In as little as one day I can help your organisation to gain more customers, cut waste from ineffective marketing and embed marketing into the fabric of your organisation.
I offer strategic marketing consultancy to help service providers to:
- Better understand your competition and customer
- Capitalise on your strengths
- Increase visibility
- Convert prospects into customers
- Turn staff & sign posters into sales people
- Track effectiveness and focus your resources
When the market changes or you spot an opportunity to offer a new service or expand into a new geographical location this often means new competitors, finding new audiences, adapting services and updating internal processes and IT systems.
If, for instance, you are used to generating all your business via a handful of contracts and find you need to reach customers directly, you will need a new sales and marketing strategy. This will need to understand your potential customers needs, wants and fears and which other organisations you are up against. You’ll need to work out how to harness the strengths in your existing services, staff contacts and existing processes and turn this into a new and profitable revenue stream.
Over my 25 year marketing career I’ve worked with dozens of small businesses, multi-site service providers and membership / subscriptions-based organisations. In as little as one day I can help your organisation to gain more customers, cut waste from ineffective marketing and embed marketing into the fabric of your organisation.
The importance of a services marketing strategy
When carrying out a periodic review of your business here’s some of the questions you’ll want to ask yourself:
- Who are your ideal customers, what are their needs, wants and fears and how can you reach them both directly and through third parties?
- Who are your real competitors and what do they do particularly well?
- How do your services, prices and processes compare? Could you make changes to convince more people to choose you? And are there opportunities to increase revenue?
- Is your website generating sufficient leads, are your proposals converting into business and are you handling enquiries effectively?
- Do you have clear messages that make sense to prospective customers? Are they consistently communicated across all channels and at every stage in the customer journey?
- How much do you spend acquiring a new customer and how much revenue / profit does each type of customer generate? How are you tracking results?
- Is your organisation visible in the places that it needs to be?
- What are the barriers stopping prospective clients from calling and becoming customers. Are your website, internal processes, staff and IT systems streamlined to support your sales and marketing activities?
Choosing the right marketing help
If you’re talking to people about helping with your marketing, it’s worth considering the following questions:
- Have they worked with organisations facing similar challenges?
- Do they operate at a strategic level? Will they look at things from a would-be customer’s perspective and think about sales AND marketing in the wider context of your organisation?
- Will they just be looking at how you promote your organisation, or will they also consider your services, audiences, pricing and other revenue streams?
- Can they help you to work out how much a customer is worth to you, how much to invest in marketing and how to track return on investment?
- If they do offer a very specific service, are you sure that this is the part of the customer journey that most needs fixing? And are you confident you’ll get a good return on investment?
Call 07941 453896 now to discuss how I can help
Why Straight Up Marketing
I’m Nicki Wakefield and I have spent the past 25 years working in services marketing. I help service providers to generate and convert enquiries across multiple services, geographical locations and revenue streams.
Using my strategic marketing and analytical skills I help organisations to realign themselves to a changing market. My expertise lies in my ability to see things strategically in a competitive market and spot the multiple small things that result in missed opportunities, wasted money and barriers to generating customers.
In addition to my work as a consultant I have led and set up marketing functions at Bupa (Wellness & occupational health), BMI Healthcare (private hospitals), MWB Business Exchange (serviced offices) and Choice Support (a medium sized social care provider). I spent my early days working in direct marketing for media organisations including the Financial Times and Warner Brothers and have spent time as Head of Membership at Kew Gardens and at Safety First Aid Group a producer & distributor of first aid products as well as a training provider and recruitment agency.
I know that times are tough for many organisations, that marketing is probably not your area of expertise and that you need value for money and solutions that are easy to implement. I’m used to working with very tight budgets and my aim is to minimise the amount of money that you need to spend acquiring new customers, cut wasted expenditure and find ways to improve your processes that will result in more joined up thinking and more business.
Because I have no vested interest in selling you a specific kind of marketing, I’m able to focus on providing advice that is right for your organisation not mine.
Find out more about my background and areas of expertise
How I can help
I can help to develop your marketing strategy, lead a short-term project and / or provide strategic marketing advice on a part-time help or an ongoing basis. A typical consultancy project may involve:
- carrying out market analysis, online competitor research and potentially mystery shopping.
- understanding your business through discussions with members of your staff
- reviewing your services and pricing, website, promotional materials, communications activities
- a deep dive into your internal processes, data and the configuration of your IT systems to identify barriers to the customer experience and where staff could capture and share information as they go about their day-to-day activities
- looking at how to set a realistic marketing budget, test different promotional activities, and implement ways to monitor the effectiveness of the various stages in the sales funnel and track return on investment.
- providing verbal insight or producing a full written report
Discover more about the consultancy process
Testimonials
See what more of my customers have to say
Case Studies
Strategy & ongoing support – mid sized care provider
Over 6 months I helped this client to create a strategy, embed it into the culture and develop their in-house sales & marketing skills read more
One-day of consultancy – training company
I helped this client redirect wasted resources, focus on key issues, improve the effectiveness of its website & increase its pricing read more
Get in touch
To create a written strategy can take a few days, however depending on the size of your business a day of consultancy may be all that is needed to map out a broad long-term strategy and identify some quick wins.
To talk more about your specific issues and how I can help call me now.
Talk through your current issues and how I might be able to help
Find out more about my background & areas of expertise
Discover more about the
consultancy process