Dec 19, 2023
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For digital agencies, and other professional service industries, recurring revenue is a must.
“It costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.”
The benefits are clear: predictable revenue, not having to rely on personal salesmanship, natural up-sell opportunities, avoiding feast & famine cycles and being able to sleep at night. Rather than focusing on selling, businesses can spend time delivering high quality services and doing the creative work they enjoy. Along with benefiting agencies, recurring revenue models also deepen client relationships - retaining their business means keeping their satisfaction and loyalty.
Here are some examples for how web agencies can build recurring revenue streams.
Unfortunately, web projects never have a fairytale ending. There are always emergency issues, bugs and other content updates that need to be addressed on an ongoing basis. Many freelancers and agencies still do this work for free.
However, setting up a pre-negotiated monthly support retainer allows clients to effectively 'reserve' services as they need it. Although maintenance & support retainers aren't as profitable as large projects, retaining clients over the long-term means not losing those clients to competitors the next time they need a design or web project.
The hosting retainer is obvious for most web agencies. Web projects will typically require hosting and can be billed for on an ongoing basis. On top of that, there are up-sell opportunities in the realm of backup services, software upgrades and more.
Many digital agencies offer SEO services because of the inherent proximity to the web project itself. Ongoing SEO services is an easy retainer to sell and provides substantial recurring revenue for minimal effort. Some examples of SEO services are:
From a more consultative angle, agencies can provide services that cover an entire department. Marketing services might include crafting an overall strategy, producing content for a defined target audience, running online advertising campaigns and ensuring success with measurement.
As a bite off marketing services or even on its own, agencies can produce monthly content for clients. Content services can include:
Many businesses don’t have the time to keep up a social media presence, or worse, don’t know how to use social media for marketing purposes. This is another potential for recurring revenue, where routine services can be completed on a monthly basis. Some of those services include:
Along with standard maintenance and technical support, agencies can sell a premium for faster, more prioritized service. For example, rather than having tasks and issues completed within 72 hours, clients can pay a premium to have them completed them within 24 hours.
Often, the reason why many digital agencies don’t offer recurring services is because the time and effort it takes to manage the processes involved is not worth the revenue they provide.
With the right tools, businesses can streamline & automate ongoing services in order to make recurring revenue possible. By using a retainer management system, businesses can:
Along with the benefits of higher revenue, businesses can effectively lower admin costs and create long-term, loyal and profitable relationship with clients.
If you’re ready to start streamlining your workflows and work more collaboratively than ever before, click here to start your free trial of automated software today.
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