Marketing products is easier than marketing services. Products are quantitative. You can measure certain aspects of your product and consumers can have a point of reference to establish value from your product. Services on the other hand are tricky. By definition they are not physical in nature though they can have physical consequences attached to them. The problem with services is you discover the value of the service after the fact.e.g.You discover how good a hair cut was after the shave. Unlike products, services bring a problem when it comes to consistency of quality. For example, the taste of fanta from one bottle is fairly similar to another bottle of fanta but with services the same person doing the same job might vary in performance. This is usually because services are people-oriented and either party might affect the measurement of performance(client or service prodiver).

You can market products on different vectors.It all depends on the market conditions and company goals.Basically it boils down to positioning on price or product differentiation. Service marketing for me boils down to reputation and that reputation is established by the message you send vs the truth of your performance. Be as open and truthful as you can on the services you are offering and try to anticipate any questions or problems that might arise in the process and be able to tackle them from different angles.

Emotional marketing strongest tools are fear and sex/intimacy. Nothing sells like those two. Sex doesn't mean physically it encompasses belonging,love and the such. Fear based marketing,we see it all the time.Condom advertisements are the best examples for that. I don't agree with fear based marketing.Bad tactic.Intimacy,is a strong force. Basically products that promise some sort of social recognition by using or endorsing them. @tycho's example is one. Another classic one, buy the car get the woman live a happy life.

I don't like emotional based marketing in general.For me its where everything went wrong with marketing. For example there is something called the nag factor. A group in the US did a study to find out how many times a child needs to ask a parent for something before the parent buys it for them. Thats wrong in my opinion

@tycho - You're right. This started in the 1920's late 30's and also started planned obsolescence. Manufacturers realized that they were satisfying consumer needs and making products that were very durable thus reducing future potential for markets.It went on till the 1950's and 60's when they changed the focus of marketing from communicating product value to using emotional marketing.Basically use products as an avenue to satisfy emotional desires and as we know human desires can never be satisfied.

Guys, where are the references and citations??? Let us improve the standards of Wazua (and by extension Kenya) by doing the right thing.

How effective is social media marketing in Kenya?