A Wren Says

Do you offer a product or a service? Trick question, I didn’t actually give you an option choose from. If you offer a service, you offer product. The real question is, “Do you offer a good or a service?”

This is the thing that gives me a tension headache, right in the middle of my forehead. There are people who claim to be marketing experts, trying to get your attention and your dollars, but they don’t know that difference. So once, and certainly not for all, let’s do a quick refresh.

Your product is whatever it is that you are selling.

If you are offering something that could be packaged and customers can take home with them, you are offering a good. Ex. You sell apples.

If you are asking them to pay you to do something for them, you offer a service. Ex. For a fee, you offer to cut their apples.

Off course, you will notice as you go out shopping and just interacting with businesses, that it isn’t that cut and dry all the time. For example, maybe you sell the apples, but you also offer to polish those apples for them. Or for a certain amount of apples they buy, you offer free delivery. They get a good and a service from you. The blurring of the two deserves its own deep dive study, but I’ll get back to my point.

Whatever you are selling is your product. And a big yell for everyone in the back:. Services are products, too.