How to Create a Productized Service
When you’re creating a business model, you have a lot of things to consider, such as – how are you going to make money? Every client has different needs when they approach a business. To accommodate their needs, business owners can either charge by hour, project, word count, or literally hundreds of other models.
This type of customization can help your clients get exactly what they need, but it also requires more work. With hundreds of clients, burnout becomes inevitable. Fortunately, there’s an alternative to the “a la carte” business model that works especially well for online services.
Instead of offering “per project” options for your services, you could offer a productized service for your clients. This article will dive into productized services, and why it’s perfect if you’re an agency or online service provider and want to expand your product set. Let’s jump in!
Table of Contents
What is a Productized Service?
- Example of a Productized Service
What are the Benefits of a Productized Service for a Business?
What are the Benefits of Productized Services for Customers?
- Sets Expectations Early
- Fits Business Needs
- Simplifies the Process
Which Types of Businesses Can Utilize Productized Services?
- Coaching
- Graphic and Web Design
- Software (SaaS)
- Digital Marketing
- SEO
How to Create a Productized Service
- Find the Target Market
- Understand Your Clients Needs
- Layout Your Product Structure
- Make Adjustments as Needed
- Don’t Be Afraid to Expand
What is a Productized Service?
A productized service refers to the offering of services, skills, and expertise in a certain area, sold as a product. When the prices and confines of the services are defined clearly, the services can be sold and marketed as a “product”.
In addition, buying this type of service from a provider should deliver solutions, direction, and insight into what the specific audience may need.
Here’s an example of what that might look like. You might offer a free consultation for your clients, then recommend various projects according to their needs. From there, you could offer different packages and pricing on your website that come with a list of services.
When a client orders a package, they’ll get every service you have pre-assigned to that package, and nothing more – unless you offer add-ons. Every project is still different, but you’ll know exactly what you’ll have to do instead of making new accommodations every time someone works with you.
Example of a Productized Service
In this example, let’s say you offer digital marketing services – specifically SEO (search engine optimization). A productized service package could resemble the following:
Each month your client would receive:
- 1 new website page with 600 words of website content
- 2 onsite blog posts
- 3 high-authority website backlinks
- 5 new local business directory listings
- 24/7 access to an SEO reporting dashboard
Notice how each of the services have a clearly defined amount. This ensures your customers will understand exactly what they would receive when purchasing the product.
You could offer a single price for this package. Or, if you want to offer more services, you could create additional packages with higher prices and more features.
What are the Benefits of a Productized Service for a Business?
Productized marketing services make your job easier in a lot of ways. Here are some benefits your business could get out of utilizing this business model:
- When a client buys a package, you’ll immediately know what you’re making and how much of each service you’ll complete.
- You’ll work faster because you don’t have to start with a completely new project every time.
- Your clients will be more likely to come back because the process has fewer pain points.
- Some clients will switch over to the package model, enabling you to provide more attention to custom orders.
- You can offer package tiers for even more profits.
- Since you know exactly what you’re doing, you won’t accidentally give a client more than they paid for.
- A faster turnaround time means more five-star reviews, positive word-of-mouth, and more website conversions.
- You can build your high quality portfolio more quickly.
What are the Benefits of Productized Services for Customers?
It might seem easy to assume this would be a limiting model, but many clients actually prefer buying packages. Here are a few ways this would benefit your customers:
Sets Expectations Early
Instead of going through the quote process, they’ll know how much they’re paying right away, which helps them set a budget. They also won’t have to worry about paying for extras later on.
Many customers fear doing business with companies where there are hidden costs or extra fees. Setting crystal clear expectations allows them to trust your business, improving the chances of long-term success for every customer.
Fits Business Needs
When they buy a package, your clients know exactly what they will get. This takes the guesswork out of paying for services. They might get more than what they’d normally pay for, which creates an even better experience for your clients.
Your clients will also learn more about what they need. If they planned on buying SEO services, they might not have realized that they need alt tags and link building along with their order.
Simplifies the Process
Buying a productized package can be much easier for your client. Essentially, they’ll order the package, tell you what they need, and wait for you to complete the order. There might be some communication in between, but they won’t have to deal with hours of back-and-forth Zoom meetings. Since you know what you’re making ahead of time, you’ll be able to complete orders more quickly than ever before.
Which Types of Businesses Can Utilize Productized Services?
Productized services are great for companies that offer online or consulting services. These could include coaching, graphic/web design, software, digital marketing, white label SEO services, and more. We’ll go over each of these types of businesses and how they can benefit from this.
Coaching
If you give knowledge, experience, or advice to someone else and charge a fee, you likely fall under the coaching category. There are many different types of coaching businesses out there including personal, executive, business, and more.
Productizing your coaching service can give clients an exact understanding of what you offer and what they receive as part of the service. This provides trust and understanding when they may not understand what the services fully entail.
Graphic and Web Design
It’s not easy to design a website or graphics for your business. In turn, individuals and companies all over the world choose to hire a graphic or web designer to do the work. Whether you offer graphic design services, or charge for each web development project, you can productize your services.
Many businesses have concerns about redesigning their website due to how much it will cost. Clearly laying out the prices and what’s included will help give potential customers much needed peace of mind.
Software (SaaS)
Companies that sell software as a service (SaaS) can also easily productize their service. Take Microsoft for example. You can easily purchase their office 365 software from their website for a specific length of time and for a specific price. They have done an excellent job of bundling their products to maximize their revenue and make it easy on customers.
Digital Marketing
With the majority of consumers choosing to make purchases decisions online, digital marketing has never been more important. Digital marketing encompasses services such as paid ads, SEO, content creation, social media, email marketing, and more. If your business offers any or all of these products, it’s easy to bundle and sell them in specific packages. You could even offer discounts for clients that sign up for multiple types of products.
SEO
SEO includes optimizing elements of your website so it ranks higher on search results. There are many different tasks that fall under SEO. Including web page optimization, link building, business profile development, keyword research, and more. This makes SEO services easy to quantify, productize, and offer to other businesses.
As an industry-leading white label SEO company, Boostability offers these services to businesses all over the world. Partner with us, and your business can offer these productized services to your clients too!
Next, let’s learn how to adapt your business services into something that can be sold as a product.
How to Create a Productized Service
1. Find the Target Market
One of the first steps in creating any business model is to find your target market. If you don’t know where your customers are, how are you going to make money? Start by understanding the demographics of people who will most likely buy the product or service you offer. Next, perform market research to understand their buying patterns and where they go to look for your services.
2. Understand Your Clients Needs
Now that you understand your target market, the next step is to figure out what your clients need. This can be tricky, but is a crucial step in the process. Perform some competitive research to find out what the top competitors are offering to their clients. Interview current and past clients to find out what their needs were, and what was most important to them in the buying process.
Let’s say they’re looking for SEO keywords, they’ll probably need web content that incorporates those keywords into their website. They might also need backlinks, metadata, alt tags, and other SEO features to make their website fully optimized. Package together the types of services that your clients frequently buy together.
3. Layout Your Product Structure
Unless you plan on offering new services, all you’ll have to do is figure out how to package your existing services. Look at competitors to see how much they charge and how they productize their services. Your overall quality of services should determine what pricing tier (affordable, mid-level, premium) your business will compete in.
Next, find the best ways to bundle your services into products that make the most sense for customers. Finally, look at your current rates and figure out how much you should charge per product or package. Your product structure should stay consistent across all of your content and messaging, to ensure all customers are offered the same price.
4. Make Adjustments as Needed
You could include add-ons, but make sure you charge a consistent rate. For example, if you offer content creation services, you could offer to add an additional 100 words of content for another $50. Don’t veer too far into customized services. When you do, you’re back to charging per project and creating more work for yourself.
5. Don’t Be Afraid to Expand
It’s important to focus on high level growth to stabilize and improve your revenue. If you have other services you have considered offering, don’t be afraid to expand when possible. This will help you diversify your product offering while using the infrastructure of your other services to ensure success.
If you own or manage a digital media or marketing company, you could expand your services by partnering with a white label SEO agency. An SEO provider can seamlessly integrate with your existing products and services. Overall, it can offer you new streams of revenue for your business at a low cost.
Count on Boostability for SEO Services
At Boostability, our white label SEO program helps your business at every point of the customer journey. Our SEO services include tasks such as keyword research, metadata implementation, link building, content writing, and much more. We work to boost rankings on Google search results, making it easier for your customers to get found online.
Our industry leading white label SEO platform has helped businesses all over the world rank at the top of Google search results. Reach out to our team today to see how we can help your business grow!
