How to Create & Sell Productized Services for Your Digital Agency 

Imagine a service provider (or a digital marketing agency) that operates like a product shelf, offering pre-packaged solutions with clear features, prices, and processes. That’s the essence of a productized service business model. Unlike traditional service providers who tailor solutions for each client, these businesses standardize their offerings, making them scalable, predictable, and customer-friendly. Also, we know that from the Gartner survey, 83% of B2B buyers say they prefer ordering or paying through digital commerce. 

It sounds more sustainable than hourly billing or per project; right? Keep reading to find out more about productized services for digital agencies.

Back to Basics: What Are Productized Services?

In the most basic terms, the productized service model is a way to standardize your offerings, transforming them into pre-defined packages – regardless of the type of your agency. It allows you to embrace transparent pricing, making it easier for customers to understand and purchase your services. And of course, this clarity attracts more clients, leading to increased revenue and streamlined operations.

Unlike traditional marketing agencies & service providers who tailor solutions for each client, productized services offer pre-defined packages with clear outcomes. This also eliminates the need for custom proposals and negotiations, making the process easier for both customers and service providers. 

As we mentioned before, each service package has a predetermined and transparent price, it’s also a great way to make budgeting easier and faster sales cycles. When it comes to systems and processes, productized services enable scaling to serve more clients without sacrificing efficiency.

Further details? Here are some real-world examples of agencies offering productized digital marketing services:

Sprout Social provides monthly plans with varying levels of content creation, community management, and social media advertising support.

Adzooma offers tiered subscription plans based on ad spend, delivering transparent pricing and predictable results.

Semrush delivers tiered subscription plans with features like keyword research, competitor analysis, and website audits, helping customers optimize their online presence.

Mailchimp provides various plans with email creation, automation, and analytics tools, making it easy to manage email campaigns.

Why Do You Need to Start a Productized Service?

No doubt; by offering standardized packages with clear features, benefits, and pricing, digital marketing agencies are reaching new levels of efficiency, transparency, and growth – especially crucial when considering the service industry is often shrouded in vague messaging. This strategic approach to defining services and pricing is key to growing an agency successfully.

In that case, productization empowers digital agencies to have a standardized set of features and benefits while tailoring packages to address specific client needs. It also differentiates the agencies from the “all things to everyone” crowd.

What’s more, as all we know, “predictability” is the lifeblood of sustainable growth. By simply offering products instead of services, digital marketing agencies can establish consistent KPIs & success indicators, allowing for data-driven decision-making. Building predictable sales pipelines based on standardized offerings and understanding the contribution of each service to the bottom line are other benefits, crucial for optimizing marketing agency profit margins.

Benefits of Productized Services in Digital Marketing

Beyond the general benefits of productization – we mentioned above -, the digital marketing landscape offers unique opportunities for this model to shine. 

✌🏻Showcasing expertise

Productization allows agencies to identify (or refine) their niche, creating pre-defined packages targeting specific marketing needs like SEO, social media management, or content marketing. This translates to deeper knowledge, sharper insights, and more impactful results for clients. 

Especially, smaller agencies & startups often struggle to compete with larger firms offering a vast service portfolio. Productization levels the playing field by allowing them to showcase their specialized expertise, attracting clients seeking focused solutions at competitive rates. 

👛 Offering clear pricing

Productized services offer defined deliverables, transparent expectations, and clear pricing. Additionally, unlike custom projects with uncertain outcomes, productized services generate predictable revenue streams. In that way, digital agencies can plan finances, allocate resources strategically, and invest in the future. 

What’s more, the standardized nature allows for efficient scaling and replication, enabling them to serve more clients without compromising quality, thus fueling sustainable growth.

🎖️ Scaling operations

The standardized nature of productized digital marketing services allows for the efficient replication of successful solutions; it enables agencies to scale their operations without compromising quality. 

On the other hand, with defined packages, agencies can predict the resources – team, tools, time – needed for each project. That approach enables optimal resource allocation, ensuring the right team members are assigned to tasks, leading to increased efficiency and cost savings.

⚖️ Building trust

As all we know, custom digital marketing projects often come with uncertain timelines and unpredictable outcomes. Productized services, with their standardized processes and deliverables, offer predictable results and timelines. Clients can expect consistent quality and know their campaigns are on track, building trust and reducing surprises.

From the View of the Customer: Saving Time, Money & Effort

As for clients seeking digital marketing support, productized services offer a compelling alternative to the traditional, often cumbersome, approach.

🔧 Clarity & speed: Offering productized marketing services simply means transparent pricing and pre-defined packages. That allows clients to quickly choose the option that best suits their needs/budget. In other words, with that approach, gone are the days of waiting weeks for custom proposals and wading through pages of jargon.

🗂️ Streamlined onboarding: Instead of lengthy discovery calls and project kick-offs, productized services offer standardized onboarding processes. This means less paperwork, quicker activation of the campaigns, and faster time to results.

💵 Reduced risk of scope creep: Custom projects can often balloon in cost due to unforeseen changes. Productized services, with their defined deliverables, minimize the risk of scope creep, ensuring clients stay within your budget and avoid unpleasant surprises.

How to Productize A Service: Guide for Digital Marketing Agencies

Transforming your digital marketing agency from offering custom projects to providing productized services can open the way to significant benefits like scalability, efficiency, and increased revenue. But where do you begin? 

Here’s a quick guide to help you navigate the process:

Step #1 Analyze your existing process/services 

📌 Start by taking a deep dive into the services you’ve got on tap. Decide on what core 

solutions you provide and how much customization they involve.

📌 Chart the steps your team takes to deliver each service. Pinpoint what you’re aiming to achieve at every stage and spot the threads that tie your methods together.

📌 Group clients receiving similar services, prioritizing those highly satisfied, profitable, and valued by your team.

📌 Analyze how the processes involved in these “winning” client accounts differ from others. Are there specific steps absent or modified?

P.S. In case you are not sure about how to classify your services amid that transformation, check out our marketing agency services list first. 

Step #2 Define your buyer/client persona 

📌 Define your personas and understand their specific pain points and needs.

📌 Create value propositions for each service on offer, pinpointing the perks that’ll hit home with audience. 

📌 Map out a strategy to craft engaging resources that showcase your know-how. 

📌 Decide on which social media platforms you’ll be using to reach your audience & drive traffic to your service offerings.

Step #3 Choose your model 

📌 Create one-off solutions that are ideal for services with clear deliverables and a defined timeframe. Like website audits or content creation packages.

📌 Offer monthly subscriptions. They are perfect for ongoing services with recurring tasks, like SEO management or social media marketing.

Step #4 Simplify and streamline

📌 Break down your services into their core components and eliminate unnecessary steps. 

📌 After deciding on pricing, plan a concise delivery process. That can be easily replicated for each client.

📌 Offer solutions that address their specific needs without unnecessary complexity. At that point, remember clients are buying value, not the number of hours you spend. 

Step #5 Create sales materials & protocols

📌 Craft “written” descriptions for each productized service & explain each package’s value proposition. 

📌 Ensure your agency is consistent with service delivery. 

📌 Inform clients about regular updates on progress and performance. Plus, give them a clear picture of their return on investment. 

📌 Embrace clear communication protocols and invest in automation tools to streamline tasks.

In conclusion, the productized services model isn’t just a fad; it’s a game-changing move that gives digital marketing agencies the upper hand in nailing down clarity, growing without limits, and forecasting outcomes with confidence. Shifting from just saying “yes” to delivering top-notch solutions paves the way for long-lasting achievement.