Service productization has emerged as a viable alternative to the traditional billable hours model for those seeking predictable, scalable growth in their business. If you want to take your business to the next level, it’s time to use the potential of productized services.
I will walk you through each step of productized services in this comprehensive tutorial, including what they are, why you should use them, and how to get started.
What is The Productization of Services?
A productized service is purchased and sold like a product. This method entails turning your services into packaged, standardized offers that look like products.
Instead of charging by the hour or by the project, you create set products that are simple for customers to understand and buy.
Take for example, our niche edits link building service which is very clear on what we offer for each package:
- Bronze package – 5 backlinks for $140
- Silver package – 10 backlinks for $260
- Gold package – 20 backlinks for $480
To ensure that all prospective clients are aware of what they are getting into, all terms and conditions are fixed. As you can see above, our productized service has well defined and fixed deliverables at a particular price.
This ensures there is less back and forth in the sales process when discussing the scope and negotiating the price.
Ways to Productize Your Service.
To create a productized service, you must first determine which of your services are best suited to being packaged as a “product.”
Productization requires a significant amount of thought and effort. Here’s an outline of steps you can use:
1. Identify Your Niche
Clearly explain the service you provide and the type of client you are seeking. In contrast to generic services, productized services are specifically designed to fulfill the demands and expectations of a particular target audience.
Ideally, you should have an idea that accomplishes these goals and that no one else can match. Offering very specialized services significantly reduces your direct competition. Although doing so narrows down your target market, the quality will surely increase.
2. Run A Competitor Analysis
Studying your competitors provides you with vital information about their strengths, shortcomings, and unique selling propositions (USPs). With this knowledge, you could beat your rivals by positioning your productized services.
By bundling your services into an unrivaled USP, you provide them with a compelling reason to choose your company above others, increasing your chances of gaining their confidence and patronage. You can take it a step further and impersonate a client to determine the customer experience your competitors provide.
3. Choose Format & Structure
Depending on your service, you can tailor a suitable format that fits your business best. There’s a wide range of possibilities here.
You could create courses or training sessions, offer your ideas in a book, build design templates, or create a website to provide your content—whatever makes the most sense.
Consider how often your clients typically need this particular service, if you will offer a support service for recurring needs, if your services are limited or unlimited, and how much it costs to deliver.
No matter which productized services model you choose, remember that in the end, you should keep it simple. Offering millions of options will only delay your client’s decision and or even discourage them entirely if the process is too complex.
4. Marketing
If you fail to market your productized services, no number of strategies can help. The results of services are difficult to predict, intangible, and sometimes delayed. As a result, customers are slow to decide who to trust, and if you are trying to sell to businesses, the process may take even longer.
Additionally, you must devote time to promoting your productized service and publicizing your wins as soon as you achieve them. Request recommendations, reviews, and testimonials from satisfied clients. This gives potential customers peace of mind that they have come to the right spot for their needs.
Examples of Productized Service
The suppliers’ creativity is the sole restriction on the variety of packaged services that can be offered. Nearly any service provider may take its most well-liked products and develop a solution that works for the majority of clients.
The following are some examples of productized services:
1. Content writing services
Writers can productize their services by providing particular content within a set time limit. You can define the word count, revision requests, and optional add-ons such as images, SEO keyword optimization, and more.
Here are a few companies that offer productized services for content creation:
- AI Contentfy offers planning, writing, and content optimization
- Punchline Copy: offers affordable copywriting services
2. Legal services
You are wrong if you believe that attorneys could only bill by the hour.
Regardless of whether they work as legal consultants or as practicing attorneys, lawyers can potentially productize a portion of their independent services.
Some examples include;
- The law office of attorney Micheal Ephraim: They provide three separate productized uncontested divorce services, with each package priced based on the delivery timeline and type of divorce.
- Lisa Fraley: Offer legal services for small business owners
3. Website Design
Web design works well as a productized service since you can charge per project.
There are various productized services available for website design:
- Restaurant Engine: provides eateries with a full package for website design
- Design Mastermind: provides one-off services for website design, sales page building, and branding
- WP Quickie: is a WordPress task management tool with a support plan
4. Coaching
Unlike consultants, who normally market their expertise, coaches, and mentors market their knowledge, experience, encouragement, and support.
Here are a few examples:
- Copyhackers: offers lessons and courses to help writers hone their copywriting abilities and conversion strategies
- Boss as a Service: helps you meet deadlines and finish your work by keeping you on track with your productivity targets
- GrowthMentor: Offers tailored guidance from vetted startup and marketing mentors
5. Software
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) involves implementing and administering an established software platform.
Examples of software-productized services include:
- ProcessKit: provides a complete implementation of process-driven project management software
- ConvertNow: an email marketing platform that helps businesses build their email lists and send out email campaigns
- Bench: Integrates human customer service with online bookkeeping
How to Market a Productized Service
1. Define your target market
The first thing you should ask yourself when marketing productized services is who you intend to sell the product to.
What demands will your productized services address? If you answer these questions, you will be able to discover the best marketing channels to reach your target audience.
2. Create a sales page
After determining your target market and what they require, your next move should be to develop a sales plan for your productized service. The sales page should be straightforward and concise.
It should also highlight the qualities and benefits attached to your service. Remember to include pricing information and a call to action so that potential clients may easily acquire your services.
3. Drive traffic to your sales page
Once your sales page is complete, you need to start driving traffic to it. There are several ways to do this, including paid advertising, search engine optimization, and social media marketing.
We recommend starting to build some backlinks for your website at this point if you want SEO to eventually become part of your marketing strategy. Our niche edits backlink service can do this for you without you doing any work. Make sure to check it out.
Choose the marketing channels that will reach your target market most effectively and start driving traffic to your sales page. Social media marketing and paid ads might be a more immediate approach because it brings customers quickly in the short-term.
In the long-term, however, you need the search engine traffic to start kicking in to bring some easy leads.
4. Convert visitors into customers
After directing traffic to your sales page, you must begin converting site visitors into paying clients. You can achieve this by providing a discount or a free trial for your service.
To improve the conversion rate on your sales page, you also need to use good copywriting and design.
5. Upsell your customers
Once you have clients, you can begin offering them more products and services through upselling. One way to achieve this is by providing premium versions of your productized service or by cross-selling related products.
You may boost sales and expand your company by upselling your clients. These marketing techniques are essential for creating a compelling product marketing strategy that appeals to your target market in addition to selling your productized service.
Conclusion
Productizing your services can be a great way to give your business a fresh start and accelerate its growth. Although productized services seem to have many appealing benefits for businesses and are simple to carry out, they also have certain drawbacks.
To be on the safer side, activate your strategic thinking and develop a well-planned strategy. Get as much information as you can from all angles, then use that information to inform your judgments.
Featured image: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash