There is doubtlessly a lot your company does very well. Indeed, like many businesses, a large percentage of those things are unlikely to be seen by your consumers. Sure, they get to witness the results of the finished service you provide them. But they’re unlikely to have a real handle on how much talent and work goes into the process. It’s time to change this way of operating.
Productization is an approach that not only showcases the sheer range of talent a business brings to projects but capitalizes on this talent as individually packaged services. In essence, you get to diversify your product offerings and boost your profile in your industry in one fell swoop. But whenever you introduce a new product to the market, your success depends on your marketing efforts.
We’re going to examine what is involved in the productization of services and how you can best shape your marketing to gain the engagement of your consumers.
Build Your Menu
To start, you need to go back to the basics of understanding the nature of productization. From a practical perspective, it involves taking the services that are part of your behind-the-scenes operations — like data analysis, video editing, or planning — and offering them as self-contained options for clients to purchase. This process has various profitability and growth benefits for your company. But think about what specific elements hold the most worth for your clients.
Go carefully through every element of your operations and consider what may be attractive optional extras for your client base. What actions do you occasionally throw into the process that can be repackaged as a separate service? Work with every department of your organization to find new “products” to complement the services you provide your clients and their industries.
From here, find areas where you can establish clarity. Before you even consider the types of content or social media posts to market your productized services, you need to be clear on what you’re offering. After all, the key to good productization is standardization. Formalize your menu by diving into the extent of the service and support you’ll be providing.
Optimize Your Strategy
In many ways, a menu of productized services makes things easier for your customers. However, it’s a generally accepted token of wisdom that anything that simplifies life for your clients can tend to make life more complex for you. Your approach to building and marketing these products needs to be guided by robust yet agile strategies at every turn. Without these, your carefully designed new products are more likely to miss their targets.
Possibly your most important action here is making certain your product strategies and marketing strategies are compatible. You don’t want sets of clashing goals. At its most basic level, your product strategy is designed to clarify the goals of your products and what you need to do to meet these goals.
Take the time to be thorough in building this product strategy, and think about the problems each service will solve, the consumers it’s designed to serve, and even the life cycle. These are data points that can inform and influence your ongoing marketing strategy. Yes, it might seem like additional work to complement each strategy with the other, but it helps to keep your goals straight and the overall messaging clear.
Remember, your strategy optimization isn’t complete once the initial planning stages are over. During the implementation of your marketing tactics, you need to commit to regular assessments. If you’re utilizing search engine optimization (SEO), insist on monthly reports about engagement insights. Where email outreach is being used, collect and assess feedback on responses regularly. This type of information can help your marketing strategy to be more flexible and allow you to make timely changes to your approach.
Identify the Right Tools
As with any form of marketing, there are tools well suited to some tasks and not others. In most cases, the type of productized service will influence your approach. However, some tools consistently tend to work well.
These include:
● Video
Videos are a powerful tool in general when it comes to marketing. However, certain types of video tend to be more effective with productized services. Behind-the-scenes content is a good option here since it highlights the work and expertise that goes into creating your service.
Explainer videos are also useful since they do the work of taking your clients through steps on how to navigate your new approach practically. Your best platform for this will depend on your target audience, YouTube is better for longer-form videos and Facebook tends to be more appropriate for ads around 60 seconds in length.
● SEO
There are a few products that SEO doesn’t make a difference in, but it is especially important for marketing productized services. After all, this shift is a big change in your business model and potentially who you’re targeting.
You, therefore, need to create content, update your keyword approach, and gain relevant backlinks to reflect these new products. There may be some scope to adjust your current SEO strategy to reflect your productized service offerings, but treating it as a new campaign can be more effective.
● Direct Outreach
Communicating directly with consumers is a vital form of marketing if you’re hoping to convert your current client base to your new model. You need to be proactive in reassuring them these changes are both in their best interest and will cause little to no disruption.
Email outreach with some personalization can be wise if you have a long list of current clients. However, make it a point to offer to jump on a call with them if they have any questions or concerns.
Conclusion
Productizing your services can be a great way to boost your company’s growth and provide a fresh perspective. However, to successfully market these services you need to create a values-led menu of products and optimize your various strategies to complement one another. With the right set of marketing tools, you have the opportunity to impact your business, clients, and your industry.
