Looking to take some of your business’s load off your plate but don’t know how? Cue productization. This article will describe what it is and how you can implement it into your business to make it more successful.
What is productization?
Productization is creating the same product for all of your buyers. Instead of helping one person with a very individualized, unique solution, make a product that helps a broad audience.
Create once, sell twice.
Or, in other words, build one product (PDF, document, etc..) and sell it again and again, repeatedly with low-effort on the backend for you.
What are the benefits of productization?
Products that are productized are:
- Easier to market These products are easier to market because you are not marketing to one specific individual; you are marketing to a group of people with a shared pain point.
- Typically tangible and concrete Will usually be PDFs or documents people can download or have shipped to them.
- Require upfront capital They will usually require money and effort on your end at the beginning to build the products, but will cost less in overall upkeep.
- Reach customers through different channels of distribution Can diversify your reach since your product is geared towards a winder audience.
To note:
The products that fall into this category will cost less money, which means they have a lower barrier to entry, and therefore, more people will likely be interested in it. For example, offering personalized consulting services at $5,000 a month will get fewer people willing to pay for it than paying for an assessment and business changing booklet to change business models for $500. There is a market for both, but the average person is more willing to part with $500 than $5,000. Know who your market is and what they’re looking for. Another way to look at it is to view it as a taster. Potential clients who don’t know if they want to pay the big bucks quite yet, would probably buy one of your products and get an overall idea of who you are and what you offer. If they like you, then they would inquire for more information.
How to begin with productization
Step 1:
To begin the process of productization, answer the questions below:
- Who is your customer?
- What is the repeatable pain point you are addressing?
- What steps are you going to take to help them address this?
If stuck, think about what you currently do and how it can be broken down and sold into different chunks. Do you already have content that is in PDF format? What do your customers always say that they wish you had? What other pain points do your customers have that you haven’t been able to address yet?
Step 2:
Next, you need to decide what your business model for your product is going to be. What do you think would best address the pain point at hand? After deciding on the business model, you can decide what specific product you would offer to your customers.
Business model options for productized services
- One-time is when clients or customers pay a fee once for a product or service delivered earlier to them. These usually are easier to sell because of the lower bar for purchase--less time and money commitment than others. The downside for the creator or business in this model is that the revenue is not recurring, so each month or cycle, the income returns to zero.
- Recurring services are subscription-based products and or services. If the problem you are trying to solve is naturally recurring, you will successfully launch work with this model. For this, it’s essential that the information is updated and continuously providing value to the customer if they are going to pay repeatedly. The benefit of this model is that due to monthly recurring revenue (MRR), you will have a consistent income and see the revenue grow each month. However, the pitfall is that customers will leave, and you will always need to be bringing in new clients, or your business will not succeed.
- “Unlimited” services is a model based on a flat monthly rate that allows unlimited access to a particular service or product. The actual definition of unlimited can vary depending on the product offered here, but the main point is that it’s cheaper and makes customers feel like VIP members because of the access. To get this model to work, your product needs to be taken advantage of by customers; if not, they will not continue to pay the fee associate with it.
Step 3:
Once you have answers to these questions, you can then proceed on to the next step, which is deciding how you will address this pain point. What modality are you going to use to spread your message to your customer? A few are listed below.
Productization examples:
- PDFs
- Online Courses
- Avocado Audio Course
- Monthly Online Membership
- Monthly Coaching Check-ins (2 calls a month for x dollars)
Step 4:
Build it.
You have the information and tools to be successful; all you need now is to create the product or products you will sell.
Step 5:
Start marketing your product or products to your desired market. Get the message out as many ways as possible to as many people you can reach. If you put out a good product, word of mouth will also help spread it.
What’s an example of a successful productization?
- Jack Butcher was tired of working for agencies and had gone off to work independently, but was putting in lots of hours and did not see the return coming back to him as he thought. Then, he learned productization and how to take advantage of it. His company, Visualize Value has taken off. It currently has 161k followers on Instagram and 107.3k followers on Twitter. If you want to learn how to implement this idea successfully into your business, you can check out more of his courses!
