This presentation covers the integrated service marketing communication tools and as well as the role of communication tools for service industry. It also covers the example relating the successful mix of communication for HOTEL MARISOL.

1. INTEGRATED SERVICE
MARKETING
COMMUNICATION

2. SERVICE MARKETING COMMUNICATION
• Service marketing communication is all about promoting yourself and the service of your
company.
• It has direct impact on the communication gap, in Gap model of Service marketing
• Integrated Services Communications
• a strategy that carefully integrates all external and internal communication channels to
present a consistent message to customers
• This means coordination across:
• sales and service people
• print
• Internet
• other forms of tangible communication including the servicescape

3. CUSTOMER
COMPANY
External
Communications
to CustomersGAP 4
Service Delivery
Provider GAP 4

4. Key Factors Leading to Provider Gap 4

5. Best Practices for Closing the Communication Gap (Gap 4)
• Employing integrated services marketing communication strategies
around everything and everyone that sends a message or signal.
• Manage customer expectations effectively throughout the
experience.
• Develop mechanisms for internal communication to avoid over-
promising and ensure successful delivery.

6. • Position and differentiate the service
• Helps Customers to evaluate Service Offerings
• Promote the Contribution of the Service Personnel
• Add Value through Communication Content
• Facilitate Customer Involvement in Production
• Stimulate or Dampen Demand to match Capacity
Role of Marketing communications

8. How is this done in services?

10. • Create memorable images of specific companies and their brands
• Build awareness/interest for unfamiliar service/brand
• Compare service favorably with competitors’ offerings
• Build preference by communicating brand strengths and benefits
• Reposition service relative to competition
• Reduce uncertainty/perceived risk by providing useful info and advice
Common Educational and Promotional
Objectives in Service Settings

11. • Provide reassurance (e.g., promote service guarantees)
• Encourage trial by offering promotional incentives
• Familiarize customers with service processes before use
• Teach customers how to use a service to best advantage
• Stimulate demand in off-peak, discourage during peak
• Recognize and reward valued customers and employees
Common Educational and Promotional
Objectives in Service Settings

12. • Build awareness, inform, persuade, and remind
• Challenge: How stand out from the crowd?
• Effectiveness remains controversial
• Research suggests that less than half of all ads generate a positive
return on their investment
Messages through Marketing Channels:
Advertising

13.  PR/Publicity involves efforts to stimulate positive interest in an organization and its
products through third parties
 e.g., press conferences, news releases, sponsorships
 Corporate PR specialists teach senior managers how to present themselves well at
public events, especially when faced with hostile questioning
 Unusual activities can present an opportunity to promote company’s expertise
Messages through Marketing Channels: Public
Relations

14. • Mailings, recorded telephone messages, faxes, email
• Potential to send personalized messages to highly targeted
micro segments
• Need detailed database of information about customers and
prospects
Messages through Marketing Channels: Direct
Marketing

15. • Advance in on-demand technologies empower consumers to decide how
and when they prefer to be reached, and by whom
• e.g. email spam filters, pop-up blockers, podcasting
• Permission Marketing goal is to persuade customers to volunteer their
attention
• Enables firms to build strong relationships with customers
• e.g., People invited to register at a firm’s website and specify what type of
information they like to receive via email
Messages through Marketing Channels: Direct
Marketing

16.  Defined as “Communication that comes with an incentive”
 Should be specific to a time period, price, or customer group
 Motivates customers to use a specific service sooner, in greater volume with
each purchase, or more frequently
Messages through Marketing Channels: Sales
Promotion

17. • Interpersonal encounters educate customers and promote preferences for particular brand
or product
• Common in B2B and infrequently purchased services
• Many B2B firms have dedicated sales force to do personal selling
• Customer assigned to a designated account manager
• For services that are bought less often, firm’s representative acts as consultant to help
buyers make selection
• Face-to-face selling of new products is expensive— telemarketing is lower cost alternative
Messages through Marketing Channels:
Personal Selling

18. • The web is used for a variety of communication tasks
• Creating consumer awareness and interest
• Providing information and consultation
• Allowing two-way communication with customers through email and chat rooms
• Encouraging product trial
• Allowing customers to place orders
• Measuring effectiveness of advertising or promotional campaigns
• Innovative companies look for ways to improve the appeal and usefulness
of their sites
Messages through Internet:
Company’s Website

19. • Banner advertising
• Placing advertising banners and buttons on portals such as Yahoo, Netscape
and other firms’ websites
• Draw online traffic to the advertiser’s own site
• Web sites often include advertisements of other related, but non competing
services
Messages through Internet:
Online Advertising

20. • Search engine advertising
• Reverse broadcast network: search engines let advertisers know exactly what consumer
wants through their keyword search
• Can target relevant messages directly to desired consumers
• Several advertising options:
• Pay for targeted placement of ads to relevant keyword searches
• Sponsor a short text message with a click-through link
• Buy top rankings in the display of search results
Messages through Internet:
Online Advertising

21. • There used to be a difference between personal and impersonal
communication
• Technology has created a gray area between the two
• Direct mail and email can be personalized
• Electronic recommendation agents can also personalize
communications
• With advances of on-demand technologies, consumer are
increasingly empowered to decide how and when they like to be
reached
Moving from Impersonal to Personal
Communications

22. • Frontline employees
• Communication from frontline staff can be for the core service or
supplementary elements
• New customers in particular need help from service personnel
• Service outlets
• Can be through banners, posters, signage, brochures, video screens, audio
etc.
• Self-service delivery points
• ATMs, vending machines and websites are examples
• Customer Training
Messages through Service Delivery Channels

23. • Word of Mouth (WOM)
• Recommendations from other customers viewed as more credible
• Strategies to stimulate positive WOM:
• Having satisfied customers providing comments
• Using other purchasers and knowledgeable individuals as reference
• Creating exciting promotions that get people talking
• Offering promotions that encourage customers to persuade their friend to purchase
• Developing referral incentive schemes
Messages Originating from Outside the
Organization

24. • Blogs – A new type of online WOM
• Becoming increasingly popular
• Communications about customer experiences influence
opinions of brands and products
• Some firm have started to monitor blogs as form of market
research and feedback
• Media Coverage
• Compares, contrasts service offerings from competing
organizations
• Advice on “best buys”
Messages Originating from Outside the
Organization

25. • Advertising, selling, and sales promotion all lend themselves easily to misuse
• Communication messages often include promises about benefits and quality of
service delivery. Customers are sometimes disappointed
• Why were their expectations not met?
• Poor internal communications between operations and marketing personnel concerning
level of service performance
• Over promise to get sales
• Deceptive promotions
• Unwanted intrusion by aggressive marketers into people’s personal lives
Ethical Issues in Communication

26. Marketing Communications
Planning

27. • Who is our target audience?
• What do we need to communicate and achieve?
• How should we communicate this?
• Where should we communicate this?
• When do communications need to take place?
The ‘5 Ws’ Model

28. • Prospects
• Employ traditional communication mix because prospects are not known in
advance
• Users
• More cost effective channels
• Employees
• Secondary audience for communication campaigns through public media
• Shape employee behavior
• Part of internal marketing campaign using company-specific channels
Target Audience: 3 Broad Categories

29. Five Major Approaches to Overcome Service Communication
Channels

30. (1) Approaches for Addressing Service
Intangibility
• Use narrative to demonstrate
the service experience
• Present vivid information
• Use interactive imagery
• Focus on the tangibles
• Use brand icons to make the
service tangible
• Use association, physical
representation,
documentation, and
visualization
• Feature service employees in
communication
• Use buzz or viral marketing
• Leverage social media
• Aim messages to influencers
• Create advertising that
generates talk because it is
humorous, compelling, or
unique
• Feature satisfied customers in
the communication
• Generate word-of-mouth
through employee
relationships

31. Services Advertising Strategies Matched with Properties of
Intangibility

32. (2) Approaches for Managing Service Promises
• Create a strong service brand
• Coordinate external communication
Goal:
Delivery
greater than
or equal to
promises
Offer
Service
Guarantees
Create
Effective
Services
Communications
MANAGING SERVICE PROMISES
Make
Realistic
Promises
Coordinate
External
Communicatio
n

33. Service Branding Model

34. (3) Approaches for Managing Customer Expectations
• Make realistic promises
• Offer service guarantees
• Offer choices
• Create tiered-value service offerings
• Communicate the criteria and levels of service effectiveness

35. (4) Approaches for Managing Customer Education
• Prepare customers for the service process
• Confirm performance to standards and expectations
• Clarify expectations after the sale
• Teach customers to avoid peak demand periods and to seek slow
demand periods

36. (5) Approaches for Managing Internal Marketing
Communication
• Create effective vertical communications
• Sell the brand inside the company
• Create effective upward communication
• Create effective horizontal communications
• Align back-office and support personnel with external customers
through interaction or measurement
• Create cross-functional teams of sales, service, and operations people
when developing new services or engaging in service improvements
• Maintain a customer focus throughout all functions

38. Interactive Imagery: Travelers

39. Service Brand Icon: The GEICO Lizard

40. Focusing on Tangibles Associated with the Service: The Sierra
Club

41. THE MOST TOP RATED BOUTIQUE HOTEL IN AMERICA

42. “Little Island, Big Escape”
“Where Modern Comfort Meets Historical Charm”
Taglines

43. INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
• MARISOL Management Training Program (MMTP)
• MARISOL Management Training Program (MMTP)
• Operations / Food Production
• Hotel Operations Management Trainee Program (HOMT)
• Service employees must be well versed in what ads are promising
• Knowledge of services offered across the organization
• call centers
• web design
• e-mail response mechanisms
• InSight (new service offered)
• Cross-functional communication
• operations
• public relations/marketing

44. INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION
• Digital Marketing
• Trip Advisor
• Website
• Facebook

45. ● Website
● Cross-marketing
● Public Relations
● Direct Marketing
● Internet Marketing
● Social Media
● Event Marketing
● Print Media
● Soft Opening
Media Tools

46. Timeline of Media Tools

47. • Launch new site - May
• Streamline the User Experience
• To be maintained all year long
• Easy and accessible reservation system
• Updated photos and content
• Link the website to social media platforms
• Optimize the Website’s Content (SEO- also to be maintained all year)
• Keywords, descriptions, site map
Website

48. ● Ongoing initiative
● Helps to attract more customers with local businesses while satisfying
services and amenities Hotel Marisol cannot directly deliver
● Ability to successfully expand using other business’ customer base
● Chance to introduce and market itself in an inexpensive way,
● Ideal local businesses to cross-market with would include gyms,
restaurants, and spas.
Cross-marketing

49. Cross-marketing: Gyms

50. Cross-Marketing: Restaurants

51. Cross-Marketing: Spas

52. ● Press Releases:
o UT San Diego
o WHERE Magazine
o Coast Magazine
o San Diego Magazine
o CoastalLiving.com
● PR NewsWire - iReach
o Per release/bundle
Public Relations

53. ● Direct mailers to be sent out bi-annually
July ‘14 & January ‘15
● Utilize email opt-ins on website
● Create an inquiry-based direct marketing plan
● Creates the ability to send personalized mailers
● Easy to track as far as ROI and effectiveness
Direct Marketing

54. ● SEO(search engine optimization)
o Keywords: Hotels in Coronado, Hotels in San Diego, Romantic Hotels in Coronado,
Boutique Hotels in Coronado
o Optional: SEM if organic leads need to be supplemented
● Hotel Review Sites/Business Listings
o Yelp, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, Travelocity,
o SanDiego.Org, GreatSmallHotels.com, i-escape.com
● Banner Ads
o Targeted on TripAdvisor, Expedia
● Online Event Calendars
o DiscoverSD, SanDiegoReader, UT San Diego
● E-Newsletters
Internet Marketing

55. Peak times - June, July, August, March (Banner Ads)
Keywords: “Hotels in Coronado”

56. Social Media

57. ● Del Mar Village Summer Solstice
● Estimated attendance 700-800
● June 19th 5-8pm
● Bronze Sponsorship
Event Marketing

58. • Seasonal Packages
• “Summer Fun in the Sun”
• “Valentine’s Romantic Getaway”
• Spring Special Wedding Group Rates”
Sales Promotion

59. ● Magazines aimed at target market
o June ‘14, July ‘14, January ‘15
Print Media

60. Soft Opening
● May 2014
● Extend invitations to influentials
o Coronado Chamber of Commerce Members
o Local Business Owners and Managers
 Co-marketing partners
o Travel Bloggers and Travel vloggers
o Budget: $10,000

61. ● Drop-down menu of referrals upon booking online
o “How did you hear about us?”
 Cross-Marketing
 Event Marketing
● Clipping Service
○ Third Party
Measuring Effectiveness

62. ● Promotional code redemption upon booking online
o from direct mailers and various ads
● Click-through metric platforms from online efforts
o Google Analytics
Measuring Effectiveness

63. Challenges of Service
Communications

64. • Intangibility creates 4 problems:
• Generality
• Items that comprise a class of objects, persons, or events
• Non-searchability
• Cannot be searched or inspected before purchase
• Abstractness
• No one-to-one correspondence with physical objects
• Mental impalpability
• Customers find it hard to grasp benefits of complex,
multidimensional new offerings
Problems of Intangibility

65. • To overcome intangibility
• Use tangible cues in advertising (showing physical
evidence)
• Use metaphors to communicate benefits of service
offerings
Overcoming Intangibility