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Digital Marketing Growth Strategies For Service Businesses

This article is more than 5 years old.

A service business needs to be agile with digital marketing if it wants to succeed today.

That being said, just because you can do many cool things with digital marketing doesn’t mean you should. The internet is the greatest and most efficient time-waster ever invented by humankind.

With that caveat, a typical service business that provides intangibles, such as accounting, banking, consulting, cleaning, landscaping, education, insurance, treatment and transportation services needs to take digital marketing seriously if it wants to grow.

First, let’s be clear on terminology. Digital services marketing is the promotional outreach using digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also including mobile phones and any other digital medium.

I recently had breakfast with digital marketing growth expert Lisa Apolinski. She is an Arizona-based international speaker, digital strategist and founder of 3 Dog Write Inc. She is considered a digital engagement thought leader, working in the industry for 20 years. Her focus is on the end user experience. And that’s where the marketing focus should be.

Five years ago, she quit the corporate marketing grind to form her own digital marketing consulting agency. She is the picture of an entrepreneur: someone who will work 80 hours a week for themselves so they don’t have to work 40 hours a week for someone else (actually she confided she was working 60 hours a week for the corporate bosses).

Here are some top tips from Apolinski on how to grow a services business with digital services marketing:

  1. "For content, think quality over quantity: Audiences want to hear from you, but only if you have something to say. Provide content to your digital audience that provides value and give information that matters to them – which will make your company the industry expert and position you for future growth opportunities."
  2. "There can be a diminishing return on digital content, so be strategic about what you develop and why."
  3. "For channels, be strategic in your choice: Not every channel makes sense for reaching your prospects. This is especially true for social channels. Think about where your prospects are and where it is appropriate and professional for your company to be. Your prospects may engage with you on Twitter but are not looking for you on Facebook, as an example."
  4. "Being strategic on which channels you are delivering content will help you keep on top of those channels and impact your company growth."
  5. "For data, apply as much as you track: Data is a key component to digital marketing growth. Understand what digital content and marketing works by not only tracking data, but applying it to your strategy. Data application provides decisions based on evidence and information, and data decisions are a great guide for helping your organization hit growth numbers."
  6. "So don’t just track data, review and apply your data learning to your current marketing strategy."

In my view, Apolinski makes good points; however, never mistake a digital marketing growth strategy for your marketing strategy. Digital marketing enhances what you do offline, it does not replace it.