No matter what industry your business operates in, it’s important to monitor the market and find ways to adapt to your customers’ changing needs. Evolving your offers allows you to grow your audience and provide a range of options that encourage your clients to remain with you instead of moving to a competitor.
So, how exactly do you adapt to changes in the market or your audience? One option is to turn your services into products.
Doing so gives you a different source of income — one that requires far less of your time and resources than the original client-facing service itself. Having a diversified income stream also makes it easier to remain profitable no matter what happens with the market.
Which services should you consider turning into products? How do you actually make that change? And what’s the best way to advertise those new products?
Let’s dive in and answer all those questions.
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The Benefits of Turning a Service Into a Product
There’s no rule that says you have to offer physical/digital products along with — or instead of — your services. But you might want to consider it, especially if you’re looking for ways to grow your business and/or cut down the time you spend on client-facing tasks.
Not quite sure what the real difference is between a service and a product? In most cases, services are intangible offers that allow clients to benefit from your knowledge and skills. Think coaching, consulting, design, and development.
Products, on the other hand, are physical or digital items that the customer can purchase and use on their own. Think e-books, courses, templates, and software.
In many cases, services require a lot of time and attention. Whether you’re interacting 1:1 with a client or leading a group coaching session, you have to be actively “on the clock” for the entire time. Plus, you also have to invest time and energy into planning those sessions.
With a digital product, you can create everything you need ahead of time and then just package it up and sell it to the customer. Products don’t usually require customization or input from you. You can standardize your products and sell them “as-is” to clients.
By turning some of your services into products, you have the chance to attract more clients.
For example, potential customers who couldn’t afford the time or cost of 1:1 coaching may be excited to purchase a self-paced course covering similar content. Likewise, a client who isn’t in the market for your custom graphic design services may want to purchase customizable templates.
Productization Step 1: Identify Services With Product Potential
So, you’ve decided to turn some of your services into products — great! The first step is deciding which of those services could work well as a product. Here are some things to consider:
- Standardization: Think about services that could be standardized and scaled to reach a large audience. For example, service offerings that are highly customized might not be ideal candidates.
- Profitability: Consider the time and effort it would take to create the product and the price you would charge. Is the potential return on investment high enough?
- Competition: Do a little market research — do your competitors offer similar products? If so, do you think your offer could be attractive enough to make potential clients choose you over your competitors?
- Value proposition: Can you clearly define the value of a productized version of a service? Will it be easy for your audience to understand how this product could improve their lives?
Once you’ve asked these questions and decided which of your services may work as products, it’s time to decide which one to start with.
Related post: What It Takes to Launch Two New Products in 3 Months
Productization Step 2: Identify Your Audience’s Biggest Needs
If you’re going to do all the work of turning a service into a product, you want to be pretty sure your audience is going to buy it.
What is your audience’s biggest need? Does this potential product address it effectively?
You should have a pretty good idea of your audience’s needs/challenges — after all, the services you offer now are designed to meet those needs. But if you feel like you need more information before you start product development, you could always ask for specific feedback.
Surveys and polls are a good way to learn more about what your customers are looking for. You can also look through reviews and ratings of your current offerings to identify the features that your customers find most valuable.
Once you’ve identified the most common need, you can build a core product offer that addresses it.
Related post: 5 Steps to Creating and Launching Digital Products That People Actually Want to Buy
Productization Step 3: Develop a Comprehensive Product Suite
Once you have a single product, the next step is to expand your offers to include more items. Having a range of products allows you to attract a broader range of customers.
Here’s how an example product suite could work:
- Develop an entry-level package of graphic design templates. Customers can purchase this for an affordable price and see the value of your products.
- Once they’re ready for the next stage of their customer journey, you could sell them an online course on altering images or developing their own graphics.
- The final step could be to introduce them to your custom graphic design service.
Now you have three stages of offers that serve different types of customers. If your original offer was only custom graphic design services, you probably had to work a lot harder to convert a lead into a client willing to pay for such a high-value service.
With this setup, you can attract customers with smaller budgets. By the time you get one of these clients to purchase your custom design services, you may have already sold one of two of the lower-level products.
Your business saw more profitability from a single customer, and that customer had a better experience because they had access to offers that met their needs at each step of their journey.
Want to learn exactly how to build a product suite that your audience wants? Pick up our comprehensive guide to developing a profitable product suite inside the Momentum Biz Vault.
Productization Step 4: Update Your Website
Once you’ve developed some new products based on your services, it’s time to make them available to your customers. That means updating your website:
- Add the new products to your online shop.
- Create individual landing pages for each offer so they’re easy to find.
- Update the navigation so visitors can go to individual product pages without having to browse through your entire shop.
- Create a sales funnel to your core product offer.
- Use copy and graphics to showcase your new product offerings.
If you want to pivot your business to drive more traffic to your products and less toward your 1:1 services, make sure the site hierarchy, copy, and SEO reflect that change.
Related post: Why & How You Should Use Targeted Landing Pages to Sell Your Digital Products or Services
Final Thoughts
Turning a service into a product offers benefits for you and your customers.
You can standardize and package an offer that previously required a high amount of effort and customization. Your clients can benefit from your expertise in various ways without having to wait until they can afford your top-tier service offerings. Everyone wins!
Ready to start converting one or more of your services into products? Make sure you have the tools and resources when you’re ready to launch.
