‘Everybody is in service’. Our modern business world confirms Theodore Levitt’s statement: even if you think your industry deals with products only, service is involved, at least in the shape of customer service after sale. Moreover, with the growing role of experience beyond the product itself, ‘Marketing plans for services’ is worth reading, whatever your line of business.
McDonald, Frow and Payne have put together an incredibly thorough and documented work. The authors’ academic and business backgrounds provide a unique combination of strategic clarity, and practical approach. This is, indeed, a ‘guide’ which is designed to be consulted and used, not just read.
Expect to be taken through the planning process step by step, with ready-to-use templates, with variations whether you are preparing a strategic, tactical or consolidated marketing plan.
But beyond the tools provided, the strength of the book resides in its pragmatism toward planning in an organisation: how to define a mission statement (not too narrow, not too wide); how to ensure the teams’ alignment (beyond words on paper); how to mix learnings from the past and inspiration from future trends… The richness of the examples chosen bring those challenges to life, ranging from Starbucks, Holiday inn, Apple, Ocado, and many financial institutions, but also to IBM and General Motors.
If you are still not convinced you should look at your business through the prism of services, think about this: when recruiting any employee in his hotel business, Bill Marriott always asked who should be satisfied first, the shareholders, the customers, or the employees. Only those who answered ‘the employees’ were given the job: Marriott believed employee satisfaction was the route to customers satisfaction, and then on to shareholder happiness.
A staple for your marketing library.
Marketing Plans for Services: A Complete Guide by Payne, McDonald & Frow, £29.74
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