To be competitive as a brand, it’s essential to constantly offer value to your customers. 

Customer value is what makes the wheels of commerce go around. It’s what makes your customers buy from you, engage with you, follow your accounts, give you positive reviews, and recommend you to their friends.

If you’re familiar with our Customer Value Journey framework, you’ll already know a lot about how to create and curate customer value. In this article, we’ll zoom in on what customer value is and some ways you can deploy it in your Customer Value Journey.

What Do We Mean By “Create Customer Value?”

“Customer value” is anything that makes your product and/or brand more appealing to customers. By adding value to your brand, product, and customer experience, you bring more decision-swaying benefits to your customer’s journey.

“Value” is anything your customer wants, needs, or enjoys. The most obvious “value” is monetary—getting a quality item for a low price is something every bargain hunter enjoys—but it’s far from the only “value” available. 

Value for your customers can include:

• Great product quality
• Fantastic customer service
• A positive brand presence 
• Ongoing customer support
• Relevant and personalized marketing
• A rewarding loyalty program
• A positive customer experience
• A trustworthy brand reputation
• A caring brand community

Let’s say, for example, that you are a Canadian telecoms brand. You produce the best business phone system in Calgary, but people still buy from your competitors. How can you bring them to you?

Adding value is the best way to turn the tide of customers toward you. You can do things like improve your customer service, add 24/7 support options, tailor your marketing in ways your customers prefer, produce engaging and educational content, add loyalty rewards, and more.

Why Is It Important To Create Value For Your Customers?

Creating value for your customers is crucial because the more value you can offer, the more likely customers are to buy your product, subscribe to your brand, and ultimately become loyal members of your customer community.

Think of every purchase decision in terms of a pair of scales. For a potential customer to purchase your product, its value has to outweigh its drawbacks.

The most obvious element of the purchase decision is the monetary cost. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Things like time, negative experience, and risk also add to the perceived “cost” of your product or service. 

For example, if your website does not look safe and professional, your customer may avoid buying your product because they fear credit card scams—even if they would find your product useful and can afford it.

Similarly, if your buying process is too complicated and lengthy, or your customer service could be better, the purchase-decision scales could tip in favor of taking custom elsewhere.

By creating extra value for your customers, you weigh the scale towards the decision to buy. And the more value you add, the better the benefits get. 

As well as buying your product, customers who get value from you will return again and again. They will also engage with your content, recommend you to their friends, and boost your brand reputation in general.

All in all, creating customer value is well worth doing. So, how do you go about it?

How To Create Customer Value

Use our Customer Value Journey

Our Customer Value journey is a framework that helps you to understand where and how you can add value to help your customers along their journey to conversion and beyond.

It consists of eight steps: Awareness, Engagement, Subscribe, Convert, Excite, Ascend, Advocate, Promote.

You can find plenty about our CVJ framework, but here’s a (very!) brief rundown:

• Aware: Get your target audience’s attention with content that is relevant and valuable for them. 
• Engage: Communicate with your customers/prospects. Let them know that you care about them.
• Subscribe: Try and persuade your burgeoning customers to subscribe to your emails and follow you on social media.
• Convert: This is the point at which your prospect becomes a customer. You can use various value-adding tactics to nudge them through this stage.
• Excite: Build on the excitement of a purchase by throwing in added extras.
• Ascend: Keep up communication and keep adding value to make your one-time buyer a repeat customer.
• Advocate: Ask your happy customer to write you positive reviews, share your content, or recommend you to their friends.
• Promote: Keep encouraging your customer community to promote your brand, and reward them for doing so.

Provide Stellar Customer Service

The quality of your customer service can make or break your customer experience. Great customer service adds a huge amount of value to your CVJ.

What does good customer service look like? Well, it ranges from things as simple as sending emails saying “Thanks for your order,” to more complex efforts, such as having a fully equipped and responsive customer support center staffed with patient, helpful, and friendly operatives.

Another way of offering great value and customer service is by having a product that will offer unique benefits. For example, offering online business cards with a QR code that automatically captures their information so that you can use analytics and metrics to measure your networking efforts.

Build Community

You can easily add value for your customer by making them feel valued. One way to do this is to focus on building relationships and community with your customers.

You can strengthen your customer relationships through things like sending emails on their birthdays, personalizing your marketing content so that it’s relevant for each customer, and generally showing that you are listening to them and you care for them.

You can expand on this by providing space for your customers to communicate with you and one another. Loyalty clubs, social media pages, events for loyal customers, and so on can all help to build a rewarding community that will add value for your customers.

Focus On Quality Over Price

It’s a common misconception that making an item cheaper adds value for the customer. While price is certainly an important consideration in purchase decisions, quality often trumps it.

However low your prices are, your customers won’t be impressed if your product is low quality. Most customers are happy to pay a bit more for a product that works well, looks good, and will last.

Most customers understand that true quality costs more. So, if you drop your prices too low, customers will automatically assume that your product is low quality.

The old “quality vs. quantity” debate is, to an extent, false—but it is still important that your customers have a good experience with your product. And that means creating something of acceptable quality.

So, we recommend focusing on the quality of your product first and foremost, and deciding the price once you are aware of your profit margins. A quality product that costs a little more will gain you more repeat customers than a poor-quality product at a low price.

Play To Your Strengths

Your strengths are where your true value lies. Maybe you have an excellent customer service team, the best quality product on the market, or a fantastic social media following. Whatever it is that you do best, play to it.

Your strengths form your USP (or, at least, part of it). Your strengths are where your value exceeds that of your competitors. So, make the most of them!

Educate, Entertain, & Engage

Producing great content is a quick and easy way to add a lot of value and boost your brand’s presence and reputation.

Blog posts, videos, newsletters, social media posts, competitions, games, and webinars—all of these are great for entertaining, educating, and engaging your customers.

Anything you can put out there that your customers will enjoy or find interesting adds value to your product, no matter what your product is.

Let’s say, for example, that you provide online fax services in Canada. On the face of it, this may not seem like a promising topic, but the right content can bring a huge amount of interest to your brand.

You could produce how-to videos, talk about the history of faxing, run case studies, and more. All of it will add value for your audience and bring in new customers.

Reward Loyalty

A loyalty scheme adds value for your customer and directly encourages repeat purchases. 

You can use your loyalty scheme to add value in a variety of ways. Many retail businesses use point schemes, in which customers get a certain number of points per purchase which they can then use to offset the cost of later purchases.

Other examples of loyalty rewards can include:

• Exclusive content
• Free gifts
• First looks at new product lines
• Discounts
• Privileged access to events, products, and services
• Enhanced customer service

Boost Your Business & Add Customer Value with A Customer Value Journey

By designing a Customer Value Journey, you will give yourself a head start when adding value.

A Customer Value Journey will show you exactly where in your customer journey to add value and the form it should take.

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For example, a speedy and safe website adds value at the point of sale. It encourages people to convert quickly and with confidence.

After a sale, a loyalty scheme and follow-up emails reinforce your customer’s positive experience and help strengthen your brand/customer relationships.

At all points, a positive brand presence, rewarding content, and a quality product are brilliant for adding value for your customers.

So, to give your customers the value that they deserve, sit down and plot your Customer Value Journey.

The post How to Effortlessly Create Customer Value appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Today, consumers have an increasing number of options for how to interact with your brand. These include virtual channels like social media and influencer marketing.

While it’s great that technology has provided us with plenty of new methods and marketing tactics, it also means you need to up your game. As a result, customers are placing a higher value on the overall shopping experience than ever before. 

The way your brand presents itself at various touch points is a major factor in conversions. Customer journey optimization works to raise overall customer satisfaction (CSAT) and promotes growth in your business. 

What is customer journey optimization?

Optimizing the customer journey involves mapping out and analyzing every touchpoint in the buying process. You can then improve the buyer’s journey by eliminating friction at each of these.

This encompasses all available touchpoints, including digital advertising, content and social media marketing. Customer journey optimization improves processes behind the camera, so to speak, so your brand, team, and products can be the stars of the show. 

Benefits of customer journey optimization

When you optimize the customer journey, you stand to gain several benefits.

Save money

Mapping out the customer journey paints a clear picture of your current marketing and sales strategies. You can easily identify redundancies and remove these by analyzing them from an outside viewpoint. Long story short is that you’ll save money on operational costs and labor. 

For example, simple customer actions like order tracking might be better and more efficiently managed by a virtual receptionist, freeing your team up to work on tasks that are more obviously profitable, such as sales.  

Increase productivity

Customer journey optimization helps you cut out the fat. A well-trimmed buying process is much more efficient when it comes to how your team members’ time is used. By focusing their efforts on the most valuable touchpoints and prospect interactions, they’ll be able to generate more leads and conversions in less time. 

Part of this optimization might mean investing in software that gives the customer more control over their journey. For example, if you offer co-working spaces, you may wish to invest in coworking space management software that empowers users to book and pay for rooms without having to speak to a team member in person or over the phone. 

Better teamwork and collaboration

The results of the 2021 Statista survey shown above found that inter-departmental siloing is the biggest challenge when optimizing the customer journey. This is where customer journey mapping rises to the challenge.

With a big-picture view, those working at the top of the funnel will better understand where their prospects are heading, meaning they’re more able to prepare them for their next interaction. Likewise, salespeople working in the middle of the funnel can give feedback on the quality of leads and help prospecting teams adjust their strategies accordingly. 

How does optimization increase customer satisfaction?

Many business benefits arise from customer journey optimization. 

Reduces Friction

Customers may encounter friction at every step of their journey. We’re not talking about Newtonian physics that explain how your car grips a road; we’re talking about obstacles to conversion that are built into your buying processes.

Customer friction is something you must overcome for the consumer to take the next step. Common causes include:

• Lack of empowerment. Do customers have their preferred channels available to them e.g. live chat and self-service options?
• Unreasonable/uncertain duration. Are wait times reasonable, and are they communicated to the customer?
• Lack of identity. Is the customer known and recognized at each touchpoint, or do they have to repeat themselves along the way?
• Lack of transparency. Do customers know what step they’re at in the process?
• Lack of consistency. Does each interaction fit with your brand and provide a positive overall experience?

Let’s take friction caused by duration as an example. You could utilize a service that enables call forwarding or queue callbacks to help lower customer wait times. This would optimize the buyer journey and make it less arduous for the customer. 

An often overlooked tactic is to focus on the obstacle causing the friction rather than the nudge itself. For example, you can make conversions easier so your prospects can sprint their way down the sales funnel.

In the early part of the journey, this might include optimization by way of marketing and communication channels. If your target audience is Gen Z and Millenials, for example, forgo traditional channels and build brand awareness on the social media platforms they use instead. 

There are many eCommerce marketing strategies that can help you optimize interactions and reduce friction.

Focuses on pain points

An optimized customer journey gives consumers a more streamlined experience. Rather than being distracted by unnecessary steps, it ensures just the right amount of interactions and information. 

This type of focused effort from your sales and marketing team means you can spend more time singing the benefits of your products or services. More importantly, it ensures each experience focuses on the specific pain points of your buyer personas. 

Personalizes the customer experience

Part of the optimization process is building customary journey maps that achieve a high level of success. Each one should focus on a different buyer persona. These custom journeys are just one way that optimization personalizes the customer experience (CX).

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Building interactions for each segment’s preferred channels increases customer satisfaction. You can also use CRM solutions, customer journey management platforms, and marketing automation to hyper-personalize every interaction. This might range from having live agents and chatbots with access to customer account information to suggesting products your buyers will be interested in. 

How to optimize the customer journey map

1. Define your business goals

Optimizing the customer journey can help you achieve various objectives, but it’s best to set your sights on a few specific goals for your business. This will help to guide you.

The following are some examples of business goals:

• To stamp out weaknesses or redundancies in the customer journey
• To gain more insight through increased customer feedback
• To increase conversions at bottlenecks in the sales funnel

2. Define your buyer personas

Buyer personas help you segment your audience according to their attitudes, values, behaviors, and demographic information. The first step is to identify your best buyers and your least valuable customer types.

When building your customer avatars, you should find common factors or indicators to help with optimizing customer journeys and areas like lead qualification. 

3. Pick your target personas

To get started, pick the buyer persona that most closely fits your business goals. If this is your first time refreshing the customer journey, you’ll likely want to focus on the personas that represent the best lifetime value. 

4. Start drafting a customer journey map

Now you have a better understanding of who your customers are, it’s time to start visualizing the purchasing journey. You need to map out every customer touchpoint or interaction from beginning to end. 

This includes every channel that’s used to create brand awareness, from Instagram and Facebook marketing to email newsletters and word-of-mouth referrals. It also includes third-party channels like affiliate marketing and other partner programs.

From here, you can start optimizing and connecting actions to build a customer journey that’s robust and efficient. 

5. Start optimizing

With a rough draft of the customer journey in place, you can begin to make alterations and improvements. Eliminate redundant or friction-building interactions, and map out pathways that allow for a seamless transition from one touchpoint to another. Ensure these make sense for the buyer persona involved. 

For instance, when nudging Gen Zers from the brand awareness to the subscription stage, you could focus on social media only. This means eliminating CTAs that involve newsletter subscriptions or inbound calling campaigns for this particular journey. 

6. Use the right tools

By now, you should have a close to ideal journey for each buyer persona. These are optimized when friction is reduced and your team is set up for success. The only problem is that nothing is ideal.

No matter how much you prepare, there will always be room for improvement, so you’ll need to arm yourself with the best tools for the job. Customer relationship management software is crucial. Other marketing tools can also help you automate and track each customer’s journey.

While you’re at it, don’t forget about the wealth of digital marketing resources available online. 

7. Optimize, rinse, and repeat

Completing your optimized customer journey map is only the beginning. You’ll need to take this process and repeat it for each business goal and buyer persona. Of course, you can use existing maps as templates for building new customer journeys.

Using marketing tools, you should be able to track the success of your freshly optimized touchpoints and overall conversion rates. Use analytics tools and trusty A/B testing to hone in on what’s working and what isn’t. 

Continue the process ad infinitum and reap the rewards of providing a seamless, frictionless customer experience. 

Optimize the customer journey today!

Businesses like yours desire their operations to run as smoothly as possible. Your customers will hold you to these same standards during the buying cycle. Now, at least, you should have the tools and team to identify what your customers want. 

This is the time to map out and optimize your customer journeys. That is, unless you’d rather wait around while they flock to competitors that offer a painless purchase process. Why not start improving your customer satisfaction levels today?

The post Creating a Journey to Customer Satisfaction appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Podcasting has become an increasingly popular way for businesses to reach their target audience and build a loyal following. But how can businesses use podcasting as a part of their overall marketing strategy?

I know firsthand as a business owner the importance of creating a targeted and effective marketing strategy that maximizes the value of each customer and builds long-term loyalty and advocacy for my brand.

That’s why I decided to leverage the power of podcasting by launching the Creative Visionaries Podcast as a part of my overall marketing strategy at Creative Marketing.

To create a targeted and effective podcast marketing strategy that maximizes the value of each customer and builds long-term loyalty and advocacy for their brand, businesses can turn to DigitalMarketer’s Customer Value Journey (CVJ) framework.

While it is most commonly used in the development of a marketing plan there is a huge opportunity to align each stage of the CVJ with the podcast marketing process.

Businesses can create episodes that attract listeners, build trust, and ultimately convert them into loyal brand advocates. This approach ensures that every podcast episode provides value to the listener, while also advancing them further along the customer value journey toward becoming a loyal customer.

To better understand how the CVJ framework can be applied to podcast marketing, let’s take a closer look at each of the eight stages:

• Awareness: At this stage, the customer becomes aware of the business and its products or services.
• Engagement: The customer engages with the business in some way, such as by visiting the website or signing up for an email list.
• Subscribe: The customer opts in to receive more information from the business, such as a newsletter or free content.
• Convert: The customer makes their first purchase from the business.
• Excite: The customer experiences the product or service and becomes excited about it.
• Ascend: The customer makes additional purchases or upgrades to higher-priced products or services.
• Advocate: The customer becomes a loyal fan of the business and recommends it to others.
• Promote: The customer actively promotes the business and its products or services to others.

Applying this framework to podcasting, businesses can create and market a successful podcast that guides customers through each stage of the journey.

At the Awareness stage, a business might promote its podcast on social media or through paid advertising to reach new listeners. By offering valuable and engaging content in the podcast, businesses can then move listeners into the Engagement and Subscribe stages of the journey.

Encouraging listeners to subscribe to the podcast and leave reviews can help move them into the Conversion stage, where they become paying customers.

During the Excite stage, businesses can leverage their podcast to deepen engagement and foster brand loyalty. By offering valuable content that speaks directly to their customers’ needs and interests, businesses can generate excitement and enthusiasm around their brand, further strengthening their connection with their audience.

This leads them directly into the Ascend stage, where customers are offered opportunities to move up the value ladder by making additional purchases or upgrades to higher-priced products or services, building a deeper relationship with the brand.

For example, a digital marketing agency could establish authority in their industry by offering marketing consulting services and using a podcast to provide valuable insights and tips to potential clients, ultimately building trust and establishing themselves as an expert in their field.

At the Advocate stage, businesses can use their podcast to create a community of loyal fans who actively promote their brand. This can be done by encouraging listeners to share the podcast with others, leave positive reviews, and engage with the business on social media.

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Businesses can create long-term loyalty and advocacy by promoting their podcast to their existing audience and leveraging the Promote stage of the customer value journey, which involves creating a sense of belonging and community around their brand.

So, we’ve talked about how podcasting can really benefit businesses. It’s a great way to get your brand out there, engage with your customers, and connect with your target audience. Plus, it’s a powerful tool for establishing your expertise and building a strong, recognizable brand.

By incorporating the CVJ framework to guide their podcast marketing efforts, businesses can create a more targeted and effective strategy that maximizes the value of each customer and builds long-term loyalty and advocacy for their brand.

To Create a Successful Podcast, Businesses Should Follow Some Key Tips:

First, they should identify a specific niche or topic that appeals to their target audience. By focusing on a specific topic, businesses can differentiate themselves from other podcasts and create a loyal following.

Second, businesses should produce high-quality content that provides value to their listeners. This can include interviews with experts in the industry, tips and advice, and engaging storytelling.

Third, businesses should promote their podcast through various channels, including social media, email marketing, and paid advertising.

With dedication and creativity, podcasting can be a valuable asset for any business looking to stand out in today’s digital landscape. By creating high-quality content that resonates with their audience, businesses can increase brand awareness, engagement, and loyalty.

Incorporating the Customer Value Journey framework can help guide their podcast marketing efforts and create a more effective and targeted strategy. So, if you’re looking to take your business to the next level, consider starting a podcast today and join the millions of businesses already leveraging this powerful tool.

The post Revolutionize Your Marketing Strategy with Podcasting appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

When someone likes their experience with your brand, trust begins to build. Once that happens, it’s time to ask for a small commitment— gathering contact information and permission to connect.

There’s just one problem. Today, people are careful about giving out their email address. You have to offer something valuable that makes it worth their while. 

The question we ask ourselves at the Subscribe stage is, “What valuable chunk of content can we offer in exchange for a prospect’s contact information and permission to follow up with them?” 

Some things you might leverage to build your email list are

1. A Downloadable Report or a White Paper. 
2. A Tool Template Checklist 
3. A Downloadable PDF (one of our best converting lead magnets of all time is our Facebook Ad Swipe File, its just a list of all of the different Facebook ads we have run in the past.)
4. Quiz Surveys (like our “What Type of Marketer Are You?” quiz.)
5. Webinars and Consulting Sessions 
6. Discount and Coupon Codes (for e-Commerce)

If you look around you’ll see these all over the place. Mortgage companies use Mortgage Calculators, Scalable (our sister company) uses our “Seven Levels to Scale” which is our primary lead magnet. 

All of these can be used as a value to get somebody to give you their contact information. So what do you use? What is your lead?

How could Hazel & Hems or Cyrus & Clark apply the subscription stage to their business?

For Hazel & Hems Boutique, a great way to get customers to subscribe is to offer exclusive discounts, products, and promotions that require subscription. Another method may be to host a weekly giveaway of a small item that requires subscription to be on the list.

For Cyrus & Clark Media, subscription to an exclusive email list that contains “secret” marketing methods for the Construction industry, combined with a piece of gated content such as a downloable asset called “10 Mistakes That Prevent Your Construction Company Growth” could be effective tools for the Subscription Stage.

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With the rise of social media and digital technologies, marketers and businesses were expected to evolve from email marketing. 

However, email marketing is still a reliable tool. Various researches show that email will become some of the most widely used and popular communication platforms in the future.

But before you utilize these free email marketing tools, find out how email marketing is used to interact with users and if it will remain a viable strategy in 2022.

The Data Behind Email Marketing

Here are a few stats to prove email marketing’s dominance in marketing strategies globally:

• In 2021 alone, the number of worldwide email users was about 4 billion, which is expected to increase to 4.6B users worldwide in 2025
• More than 300B emails are forecasted to be received and sent every day in 2022

But if you want to derive maximum benefits from email marketing campaigns, you have to take an all-inclusive approach towards making the right and fitting email marketing strategies. 

Luckily, there is a range of credible, effective, and free email marketing tools you can use to organize and schedule various email campaigns. 

What’s more, they even provide analytics to ensure success. 

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5 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Still Vital In 2022 

And if you needed more convincing, here is why you should stick with email marketing:

1. Email Marketing Allows for Personalization

Email marketing enables marketers to create customized content for customers according to their buying patterns, journeys, behaviors, and other factors. 

Utilize data trackers and analytics to know what interests consumers have. Plus, what sort of products or content do they like most. 

For instance, if your consumers like a particular clothing design from your catalog, you can personalize emails by including related products. 

Essentially, you can use email automation software tools to view where your consumers lie in a sales funnel stage and create content accordingly. 

2. It Produces Better Outcomes Than Most Other Marketing Channels

Believe it or not, email marketing gives the highest ROI (return-on-investment) than several other marketing means. 

So for every one dollar spent, email marketing produces more than $40 in ROI. 

In addition to that, it provides improved conversion rates. Various studies show email generates 66% of conversions. It’s 40-times more efficient and successful than other social media channels.  

To get the best results, regularly monitor the metrics of your email marketing campaign, such as click-through rates, engagements, bounce rates, etc. 

3. Email Marketing Cuts Costs

Compared to conventional marketing approaches, email is both cost-effective and straightforward. 

To begin with, you don’t require a huge budget to advertise, produce, or print the ad. Therefore, it avoids the associated expense of hiring a digital and video production crew. 

In email marketing, all you’ve got to do is hire a professional graphic designer to create appealing visuals along with excellent content, and you’re all set. 

Additionally, as people increasingly rely on mobile phones now, email is an effective way to connect with potential customers. 

4. It Creates Brand Loyalty & Connection

Email marketing campaigns are among the most effective ways to boost brand awareness among customers. 

For example, you could send informational content regarding brands’ mission, products, values and interact in a much healthy debate with your targeted groups. 

When your potential customers better understand what your business stands for, chances are, they can engage and connect with it much better. 

So to form a steady connection with users, create consistent, long-term email marketing strategies to keep consumers anxious for your next email. 

5. Email Marketing Amalgamates with Other Marketing Means Seamlessly

One of the best things about email is that you can integrate it seamlessly with various other social channels such as:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn 

For instance, businesses can put social platform icons in emails and request readers to follow. 

In addition to that, you could display a collage of Instagram posts in your emails to show consumers a sneak peek of your business’s Instagram profile. 

Many marketers place “Pin it” options in emails to enable consumers to directly save images to their accounts. 

Related Articles

• How Standardizing Your Sales Process Boosts Overall Conversion

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 1

Takeaway

Email marketing strategies are a winning way to communicate with potential customers and collect valuable insights.

And these resources will help you create a cohesive buyer journey and build brand awareness among the audience. 

The techniques mentioned above will help you create robust email marketing strategies that compel new customers to engage with the brand.

The post Why Email Marketing Is Still Crucial In 2022 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Agency owners know the struggle of packaging deliverables.

They know their expertise (like content marketing, paid ads, or SEO), but it is hard to wrap it into perfect packages that your prospects can’t say no to. If you offer too little, they won’t be interested. And if you offer too much, they might not be able to afford your services.

Your agency needs to make a profit, and that means you have to get an ROI on all your lead generating investments. That’s why building your first 3 marketing service offerings feels like a daunting task.

If you mess this up—your business doesn’t grow. 

Luckily, tens of thousands of agency owners have walked this path before you and figured out how to market your service offerings strategically. It all comes down to something you see all the time—tiered packages.

Tiered packages look something like this:

1. Basic
2. Premium
3. Top-Tier

These tiered packages give your clients the option to choose between the deliverables that work best for their KPIs, and their budget. 

But what do these packages look like for agencies? Let’s look at some examples…

Your Basic Package

Think of this package as your Step One. It’s for clients who are dabbling in your marketing expertise (like email marketing or data and analytics). It’s the package with the least amount of deliverables, time commitment, and investment. It’s your minimum viable product (MVP) that you can sell that still has a profit margin.

A basic package for a content marketing agency might include:

• 4x articles per month for the client’s blog
• 5 distribution channels per article
• $5,000/month

A paid ads agency’s basic package could look like:

• 8 ad sets per month
• 3 conversion goals
• $5,000/month

This is the best package for prospects who don’t have a lot of money to invest in their marketing just yet (but want to get started!). With this package, you can not only show them the ROI of working with your agency. You can also get the wheels turning on their content output or paid ads account.

These clients are the *best* clients to continue to upsell down the line. Once you’ve achieved results for them (a.k.a helped them make their investment back AND then some), let them know how much more successful ($$$) they could be if they upgraded to your Premium Package.

Your Premium Package

Chances are that most prospects will choose your Premium Package, in the same way you generally go with the middle-tiered package for the subscription services you subscribe to. The Basic Package can be too simple, and sometimes you need more experience with the company before you’re willing to go for the full Top-Tier Package (we’ll talk more about that in the next section).

Your Premium Package is a few steps up from your Basic Package, with more deliverables, more time commitment, and higher investment. The caveat is that this extra work and investment comes with a higher ROI.

A premium package for a content marketing agency could be something like:

• 8x articles per month for the client’s blog
• 10 distribution channels per article
• $10,000/month

A paid ads agency’s top-tier package could look like:

• 16 ad sets per month
• 6 conversion goals
• $10,000/month

Essentially, your Premium Package builds off of your Basic Package. You’ll add more deliverables and charge more for your time, and the ROI that comes from publishing more content or paid ads (for these examples). Sometimes these deliverables are the same as what you were offering before (like adding more articles), but other times your Premium Package might include differing deliverables.

For example, a premium package for a content marketing agency with differing deliverables could look like:

• 4x articles per month for the client’s blog
• 4x newsletters per week
• 10 distribution channels per article
• $10,000/month

Notice how instead of adding 4 more articles to this package, we included 4 newsletters instead? That’s a change in deliverables based on the package. For some agencies, this will make sense and for others, it works to just add more of the same deliverables to your basic package.

You can do the same thing with your Top-Tier Package.

Your Top-Tier Package

Think of your Top-Tier Package as the Rolls Royce option of your agency. This is the fanciest, most prestigious package you offer your clients. This means that you want this package to *feel* fancy and prestigious—and like the clients that choose this option are entitled to much more than your Basic and Premium package clients.

With your Top-Tier Package, you can offer more of the same deliverables included in your lower-tiered packages. You can also offer special exclusives—like 1:1 coaching sessions, events, gifts, and more. This is a great time to put your marketing cap on and think what could make *this* package so much more special than the rest.

Of course, the main answer is an ROI. But, that doesn’t have to only come from more money in the bank. An ROI could be 1:1 access to your thought leader CEO, specialized trainings, and free worksheets. Think of the things that make your client’s lives easier and if you could add them as a deliverable in this package.

A top-tier package for a content marketing agency would be: 

• 10x articles per month for the client’s blog
• 10 distribution channels per article
• Monthly content marketing mentorship calls
• 1:1 Q&As with content marketing experts
• $15,000/month

A paid ads agency’s top-tier package could be:

• 20 ad sets per month
• 6 conversion goals
• Access to exclusive Facebook events for marketers
• 2x a year retreats for your clients
• $20,000/month

Notice how we added in more deliverables, but we also added cool stuff like mentorship calls and exclusive events? Things like this can make your Top-Tier Package look *extra* fancy, despite it not taking much more time out of your schedule. You don’t have to add these extras, though. You could always do something like…

A content marketing agency’s top-tier package:

• 12x articles per month for the client’s blog
• 10 distribution channels per article
• $20,000/month

This Top-Tier Package just multiplies the number of deliverables (and the ROI).

The Easiest Way To Start Building Your First Marketing Service Offerings

Your prospects and clients have already told you what they want your packages to look like—it’s just a matter of listening to them. When they tell you they want more blog traffic, they’re saying that they need higher quality articles and some SEO help. If they tell you they want to sell more ecommerce products—they’re asking how you can get their products in front of more eyes using paid ads.

Chances are your products are already outlined by your clients. You just need to go in and fill it in with color.

This is a great time to survey your audience or current customers about what they would want from your packages. Just like you ask your client’s customers for feedback to create your marketing strategies—you can ask *your* prospects and clients what they want to see from your agency.

Based on their feedback, you’ll create 3 types of packages for them to choose from:

1. A Basic Package
2. A Premium Package
3. A Top-Tier Package

Once you set up your packages, it’s time to start generating leads for your agency to fill your schedule. Generating leads can be tricky if you don’t know the right strategy. Inside of DigitalMarketer Lab, we have trainings from multi-million dollar agency owners teaching you how to create your own 7-figure agency. 

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