#179: Bundling and Productizing as an Antidote to Commoditization

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. Just a quick reminder that you can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 179. And those show notes include a summary of our discussion here today, as well as links to resources I might mention during the show. You know, it's no secret that as content marketing has turned mainstream, fees in general for many types of projects continue to suffer. It's becoming harder to find businesses that don't use content marketing these days. I mean, even five years ago, I remember it wasn't quite mainstream. But now today, I mean, just almost, you know, virtually every business out there is using some version of it. They understand. They understand the need for it. I would say that blogging is the most common gateway drug, if you will, for many businesses. So if any business or organization is going to enter this, that's typically going to be the way they're going to get started, at least on a repeated basis. So you have that. You have the fact that everyone's kind of come in to the party, then you have a few other factors that are impacting this. Upwork and other job platforms have gotten better and have attracted an enormous amount of writers from all over the world. Not just writers, obviously, creative professionals in all professions. And then you have things like artificial intelligence technology entering the fray. You know, been reading articles about how artificial intelligence is starting to write content and frankly, and this is not what we're going to be talking about today, but I'm not surprised. But I don't think there's reason to worry, at least not if your goal is to produce great work for great clients and really highlight your value and deliver great value to your clients by bundling. Let's talk about bundling. Let's talk about productizing. With bundling. I think the easiest way to think of bundling is to think of McDonald's or fast food restaurants and the meal combos that came out, I don't know, whatever, 20, 30 years ago, before these combos, the way McDonald's and Burger King and Chick Fil A worked is you ordered whatever meal you wanted, like the burger, the sandwich, and then you ordered a side if you wanted to, and then you Ordered a drink, and at some point, I'm not sure who it was. I suspect it was McDonald's. He said, you know, we should put together some packages, some combinations, some bundles. And today that's really kind of the standard way that a lot of restaurants, especially fast food restaurants operate. In fact, McDonald's will lose money if all you order is two cheeseburgers and an ice water. There's not enough margin in there, profit margin to make that work. But in a bundle, when you then add, you. You buy a combo that includes a soft drink and includes a side. And maybe, of course, you know, you supersize, you do any of these other things, these upsells, then the profit margin on that transaction is ridiculously high for the restaurant. Let me give you some other examples, okay? And then we'll kind of bring it back into our business. I buy most of my. Many of you guys know that I really enjoy wine, different types of wine. And, you know, my wife and I are just love trying new things, new wines. And I buy most of my wine from a store here in Atlanta called Highland Fine Wine. They're fantastic. The owners are just. They really care about what they do. They take a lot of pride in their. It's a small operation, but a very, very smart assortment of wines. And they take a lot of pride in what they bring in and what they offer their customers. In fact, you can go in there and you could just pick something blindfolded, and it's not going to be a bad bottle of wine. There's no bad or average bottles. Everything there is safe. Well, one of the things they do, which I absolutely love, and this took me a little bit of time to get used to, because at first I resisted, is they offer their monthly six packs. And the way they refer to them is, hey, these are the best six bottles of red wine or white wine. They got a red and a white that we could find for $75. And I love that wording. The best six bottles of red we could find this month for $75. It feels like, you know, we went searching, I mean, we spent weeks really just searching high and low for some amazing wines that didn't cost a bundle, that were ridiculously underpriced. And we bought everything we could. We bought the whole allocation. And we're proud to offer it as a bundle to you this month. And in fact, not only that, but we're going to tell you a little bit about each bottle that you bought. We're going to give you the story. We're going to give you how the wine, where it comes from, what it pairs with, what kind of food, why we're excited about it. And we're going to give all this to you in a sheet. And man, they do a fantastic job. So, by the way, if you live in the Atlanta area, I can't recommend them enough if you enjoy wine. So why is this great? Well, we'll talk more about that, but really, it's. It's a. It's a way that I don't have to. I can buy wine without having to do the research or think about it. Even as. As interested in wine as I am, I just don't have the time or the energy. Right. So, yeah, it's a great way to bundle wines that ordinarily may not move as quickly as they would if they were on the shelf just on their own. There's an outfit not too far from my house called Stars and Strikes. Here's another example, and it's an activities center. They basically have the combination of bowling, laser tag, bumper cars. They have an arcade, and my little one loves to go there. Daddy, let's go to Stars and Strikes. Let's go to Stars and Strikes when we go a few times a year. The other day he had a. There was a teacher work day at school, so he and I spent the day together, and that's what he chose as the main thing he wanted to do. So we went in there and. Okay, you can imagine if you've ever been to one of these places, first of all, the arcade is just extremely noisy, and the counter where you pay and for whatever you're going to use or whatever you're going to do is always close to the arcade. So there's like, there's bowling on one side, a lot of people there, and then there's the arcade, and it's just noisy. And then my kid's excited and he's asking me a million questions and, daddy, can we do this? Can we do that? And. And then he's running around, so I'm trying to, you know, keep an eye on him. And, you know, they got, okay, what are we going to do? And all these options. And I'm trying to add things up to see, okay, should I do that, or is this a better deal? And guess what? They have bundles. They could do this thing where they have, you know, unlimited bowling. And then they. You could do a laser Tag. And then $25 of Arcade for a fixed price. And you know what? That's exactly what I did. I said, you know what? Give me that. I don't want to think too hard right now. I'm trying to make sure I don't lose my kid. That sounds great. We'll do that. Okay. So they made it easier on me. A luxury hotel. Okay. I've done this a few times before where we'll do like a date night. And my wife, we don't do it often enough, but we'll do dinner, a really nice dinner, and then we'll stay in a nice hotel close by just to just kind of get away, you know. And I will do the bundle. They'll do. Basically, it's a deluxe room. It might include. I haven't done this one in particular, but sometimes they include. Well, for this price you could get an upgrade on the room, then a couple's massage and then breakfast in the morning. Oh, by the way, also when you check in, there'll be a bottle of champagne in your room. Iced. We include valet parking. You don't have to worry about that. In man, you know what? Yeah, give me that, give me that. I don't have to think about this. I like that. I like the idea of all those things together. Sure, sign me up. Product. So that's bundling. Productizing is a similar concept. It's about taking something you do a lot of and then clarifying it and putting stronger parameters around the scope of work and then offering it for a fixed fee to everyone out there. So it's think of it as clear, no nonsense pricing. So it's kind of a flavor of bundling. I'll give you an example. So let's just say you offer a productized service. It's a package that's a five to seven page white paper, corresponding landing page for it where people can request it. An email campaign to promote it to your client's list, social media copy, and maybe a slide deck summarizing the key points of the paper. Or maybe instead of that, it's a one page white paper summary for the sales team to, to use either internally or to hand out to, to prospects. All this for let's say $7,000. So it's a fixed fee. The difference here is not only are you bundling, but you're also getting real specific about the scope of work and the limitations of the project. So what it includes and doesn't include. And that's why you can afford to take that risk and say, no, it's going to be $7,000 and I can guarantee I don't have to give you a range. And it's not well, it depends. No, you will get these things for this price. Now, here are the limitations and here are the parameters, and we need to work in this manner. And you only qualify if you meet these criteria. So why is this approach of bundling and packaging so effective? Well, I want to make sure. And you kind of may be getting the feel for why, but I want to be very clear about why I feel that it's so effective. And that's because it puts the client's attention on the outcome you're helping them get, rather than on the unit price for each of the deliverables in a package, or if they were unbundled, if they were sold separately, the unit price for each of those. So here's another way to think about it. It puts the emphasis or the focus on the experience rather than on the deliverables. In other words, the actual pieces you're writing. Right. So the experience rather than the actual pieces you're delivering. So let's go back to my examples. Highland Fine Wine. You know, the experience of that bundle that you get from that bundle is you get to go on an exciting wine adventure around the world. Some really exotic places. I mean, they really go deep. And they've told me, look, we search high and low for these wines. Just last night we opened a bottle, the white six pack. The white wine six pack from Israel. I've never had a wine from Israel. As long as I've been enjoying wine, I don't think I've ever had wine from Israel. It was fantastic. Plus, of course, I'm just thinking, wow, this is a wine from Israel, you know, this amazing historic place. Little corners of France, wines from Patagonia, remote corners of Spain, regions that I've never heard of, things that you would never try or do on your own because you don't know how to navigate those waters. That's essentially what you're getting. Even someone like me, I consider myself a fairly sophisticated wine drinker. I would not necessarily go after and try all these different wines because I don't know if I trust myself. And then you're taking a risk, well, what if they're not that great? They sounded great, but I don't know anything about it. They've taken care of it. Basically what they're saying is, trust me, you're going to go on an adventure here and you're going to try some things that normally you wouldn't try for yourself. And I've discovered some great gems of which guess what? I've come back to the store and said, do you have any more of that? I don't want another six pack. I just want four bottles of just that specific, specific wine that was in last month's six pack or this month's six pack. So it's a really, really smart way of doing it. Guess what? I mean, if we really want to get detailed here, they're buying in bulk, right? Many cases they might be able to get a great deal from the distributor and they're turning over that inventory very, very quickly. So, you know, not to get too crazy here, but think about this from a receivable standpoint, rather a payable standpoint, accounts payable standpoint. They are able to get terms, payment terms on that inventory that, you know, they're selling it before the invoices are due and they're able to lower their inventory carrying costs. I mean, there's just all these wonderful benefits that come from that. And I think there's some great lessons even for us. Even though we don't have inventory, there's some parallels there to what we do. So let's talk about the stars and strikes example, right? The arcade place. You get to experience everything inside without having to make difficult choices. Without having, you know, you go in there and again, the noise, your kids just. Oh, man. Just. That's fine. That sounds great. Give me that. Okay. That's a great benefit to a parent. The luxury hotel, everything's taken care of for you. If you're a parent and you ever do this, you know what that's like, right? It's like, wow, finally I'm taking care of everybody and finally somebody's taking care of me and I don't have to worry about any of these things. Nothing to worry about here. And in my case, guess what? Now I'm the hero to my spouse. It's like, yes, yes, I was able to create a great experience that she's really happy with in a writing business. So let's talk about that because we've been talking about non writing, non creative businesses. The way it works or the reason it works is it puts the emphasis on the fact that the client doesn't have to worry about all these moving parts and pieces. They're already overwhelmed with so many roles and responsibilities. Especially if you are working with busy people, business people, corporate people. By taking care of more of the pieces, you're taking care of it and you're offering in some cases, new ideas they hadn't thought of. Now, is that something that everyone's going to go after? No, not necessarily. Okay. And we'll Talk about, okay, what do you start? How do you do this? How do you know that this would be meaningful or helpful to your clients? Some cases it's really not. But again, in our business, it's really about, okay, how can I create a better experience for them? How can I take the stress out of the process? How can I just make it easier for them to make decisions and then just not have to worry about this thing? Because they got 28 other things to worry about. So let's talk about how you could implement something like this. Where do you start? Because maybe you're thinking, you know what, I like what I'm hearing, but I'm not entirely sure how I should do this. Should I just like revamp everything I'm doing? And the answer is no. I think the best place to start is to think about what you offer today, the services you offer, and then ask yourself, okay, what else sits on top of or beside your piece of the project? So let's just take blogging, right? If you're offering blogging again, that's going to be a losing game, man, over the next few years and you're already feeling it. That's just not going to be a good way to make a living. I mean, trying to eke an existence out of blog post writing alone. You're selling unit pricing, okay, that, that's the focus is unit pricing. How can I bundle and put together some other pieces that would be helpful to the client and greater value add. Plus, by offering it as a bundle instead of itemizing everything, I can have more profit margin in there. So some ideas around again, blog posts, think about what else sits on top of or beside or even below the current project. You do blogs, editorial, calendar, strategy, content strategy, brainstorming topic ideas with your client. Social media, that's a whole new world right there, right? Repurposing content, whether it's your stuff, their existing stuff, stitching together existing content. So again, your stuff, existing stuff, stitching it together into longer format content assets. Okay, so start there. What do you offer now? What else sits on top of or beside your piece of the project? What you focus on? Second thing I would do is think about what different tiers you could offer. So this bundling and packaging is another. It's a great opportunity to not just offer one flavor, but offer multiple flavors. Good, better, best. Okay. You know, I think many of us get stuck with in this thinking of, okay, well they asked for this, so I'm going to give them this what they asked for. What about offering some premium Packages. You've all seen this as consumers. Okay, you asked for that. Great. You know, how about adding this other thing, or here's this bundle where you get that plus all these other benefits. And in many cases, if you offer three different tiers, clients will take you up on the middle one many times, even the top one. And the middle one is always going to be higher than what you would have normally offered, which is the low tier one. Just kind of the plain Jane, the, you know, the cheeseburger. And here you are offering the meal, the complete combo. The third thing I would do is ask some of your peers what of anything they're offering right now like this. And if they're not, offer to collaborate on some brainstorming with some of your fellow writers and copywriters, maybe do some mastermind sessions with some people you know and trust and see what you can come up with. Just brainstorming right now. You know, it doesn't have to be anything definite. You don't have to agree that at the end you will end up with something concrete that everyone's going to offer, just a way to collaborate with others. Something else along those lines you could do is ask your clients what would help them, you know, what else? Can I do this for you? You know, what are the things you think somebody like me could help you with? Or what are the things are you doing that you struggle with and get done? And maybe I'm just trying to figure out some, you know, how to offer some other things that could be helpful to some clients and, or get feedback from them on some of your ideas. If you already have some ideas, get some feedback from them now. If you do that, just make sure they understand. Look, no strings. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I just really value your, your opinion here and your feedback. I bet you'll get some, some great things for some of your trusted clients. Next. Just consider starting small. There's no need to overhaul everything. Just start small. You don't need to restructure everything you've got right now. Start with something simple, one thing, and see how it goes. Put it out there, try it. You won't know until you get out there and do some rapid prototyping, if you will. And believe me, you'll learn as you go. Many times what you initially thought was gonna be the best idea ever that was gonna change your business ends up not being quite it. So the key is not to get discouraged and instead let it show you the way. Many times, you know, that thing that didn't quite work out suddenly showed you that a different flavor of that, or maybe the flip side of that is what you need to be more successful and to take things to a whole new level when it comes to your pricing. So bundling and pricing again, I can't encourage you enough to at least start thinking about this. We'll unpack some of the other elements here over the next few months. Things you could do to just avoid commoditization and continue going up the value ladder in your business and with your offerings. I hope you found this useful. This has been Ed Gambia. Have a wonderful rest of the day. Take care. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.