Selling and marketing a service based business is a unique challenge that does not get enough attention, which considering services make up significant percentage of the US economy, is rather a problem.

I found this article on a favorite site of mine for marketing articles that lays out some of the differences between selling and marketing services as opposed to products. Four Factors That Distinguish Services Marketing at MarketingProfs.com

Many service companies often look at marketing as marketing, and often use marketing tools and techniques that are more appropriate for product companies. If you are a service business you should really be looking at “service marketing” not just marketing. It’s not surprising that product marketing techniques are the most well known, marketing as a discipline has only been around for 50 years, and the first 40 years were mostly focused selling products, differentiating cereal on a shelf of the supermarket, or getting you to try the other brown, sugary, fizzy drink.

I can’t recommend enough the book “Selling the Invisible”, if your in a service business you should own a copy.