Can your business take advantage of the eCommerce boom? How to productise your service Part 1

In 2020 the growth of eCommerce was huge, largely because we were in lockdown or restricted, so the reliance on delivery services was massive. Off the back of the COVID-19 global pandemic, companies scrambled to digitise their product offering in a bid to keep the doors open and trading. 

2020 was the year store fronts went digital, kitchen tables turned into conference rooms and our work lives, particularly in the big smoke, changed forever. It forced many to fast forward the digitalisation of their business at warp speed, much of which was moving slowly or parked due to it not being considered necessary or a priority.

Australia’s ecommerce growth was highlighted in Australia Post’s recent eCommerce Industry Report. This report found 12.3% of Australian retail sales were conducted online in March 2020, with 5.2 million households shopping online by April 2020, an increase of 31% against the year-on-year average. These figures do include specialty food and liquor, which we know when gangbusters.

Huge numbers like this present an incredible opportunity for small businesses who embrace e-commerce to connect with new customers beyond their local area and find new revenue streams.  It’s also an opportunity for some businesses to sell directly to the consumer rather than to another business that on sells your product.

So, if you don’t have a physical product to sell, how do you take advantage of the eCommerce boom?

It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, there are ways for you to productise your service or turn your product into an ecommerce option for your clients.

Let’s firstly look at what a productised service is?

A productised service simplifies and focuses your business’ marketing operations into a model that is more predictable, process focused, and easier to sell.”

This means that productising allows you to maintain the same high-quality for your services while serving more clients, plus you can earn more by getting new clients and scaling your business.

Where to start

• Make a list of your service
• Highlight the ones you are great at doing
• Find a problem that your ‘great’ services can solve
• Find the solution to that problem
• Define your value proposition
• Conduct competitor research
• Validate your idea in the market
• Start selling

We are going to dive deeper into this in Part 2 of the blog series

Benefits of productising your knowledge:

• Scale your business
• Serve more customers
• Sell more
• Sell to clients outside your local area
• Change your lifestyle

As we saw in 2020 the world can change unexpectedly and putting off providing a more stable sales base doing something like productising your product is not a smart move.

We will explore more on this topic in Part 2. Stay tuned