How To Find the Right Positioning for your Productized Service

If you’re thinking about productizing your service, it’s important to first consider your services positioning - the unique identity of your productized service within the market. 

In other words, you need to figure out what it is that’ll make your productized service stand out from your competitors. The goal is to niche down and find a position that resonates with your target customers and lets you fulfill your orders efficiently.

In this article, we’re going to be discussing how you might want to go about this process using the ‘jobs to be done’ framework. 

What is the ‘jobs to be done’ framework?

The jobs to be done framework is an approach to product development based around the idea that people pay for products and services to get a job done. 

Here’s a real-world example to illustrate. Think about why you might purchase a lawnmower - what job would you be trying to get done? The most straightforward answer is to cut the grass, right? 

But wait a second - let’s think about it a little more deeply. What’s the reason that you’re cutting the grass in the first place? The answer is probably something along the lines of ‘to keep my lawn looking neat and tidy’.

A company in the gardening industry could use this insight to inform future product development. For example, they could look at developing a genetically-engineered grass seed that never needs to be cut.

See how it works? At its core, it’s about understanding that customers don’t purchase products/services, they ‘hire’ solutions to get jobs done. 

Applying this framework to your productized services positioning

Picking a niche is one of the most important steps to productizing your service. In fact, Design Pickle’s Russ Perry says that niching down is the best way to compete.

You can apply the ‘jobs to be done’ framework to help you decide how to niche down and focus your productized service positioning and offering. 

Start by thinking about who your target customer is and make a list of the main and supporting jobs they’re trying to get done. 

For example, if you’re offering a content writing service, your customers may be online companies with company blogs. The main job they’re trying to get done might be something along the lines of ‘generate more sales’. 

As part of that main job to be done, a related job that needs to be done is ‘to develop a content strategy to drive traffic to my website’. Three more related jobs that need to be done to achieve that are ‘to come up with blog post ideas’, ‘to write blog posts’, and ‘to publish blog posts’.

You might draw insight from this and decide to offer a standard service package that helps your customers to meet more than one of these jobs. Rather than just offering to write blog posts, you might offer a fixed-price package that includes topic ideation, written content, and publishing. 

Remember to keep your product offering aligned, because “If you are trying to do too many different things, you will dilute your message and your brand,” as User Experience Lab recommends in their notes on productizing design.

Research your competitors

Another important step is to look at competitors offering similar services to you and try to figure out what customer needs are currently being unmet.

For example, let’s say you’re offering a graphic design service. You know there is lots of competition in the space but you notice that none of your competitors seem to be offering a rapid turnaround. They all give weekly or fortnightly turnaround times for brand logos.

You might decide to position your productized service to meet this need by offering custom 1-day brand logos delivered within 24 hours of the order request.

Here, you're standing out from the competition by offering added convenience for your customers, but there are plenty of other ways you might position your productized service to stand out from the competition and better meet customer needs. 

For example, you might want to: 

• Provide better customer service
• Offer more variety/choice 
• Be more reliable
• Offer a higher-quality service
• Have a better reputation

Make sure you can fulfill orders efficiently

One of the main benefits of productization is that it allows you to fulfill your orders with less effort as you’re selling something with a defined scope. It’s important to keep this in mind when you’re trying to find the right positioning for your productized service.

Think about whether or not you’ll be able to streamline your processes so that you can deal with larger order volumes efficiently. If demand is scaled up, and you start selling more units than you usually do, will you still be able to fulfill those orders?

Final thoughts

Hopefully, this has given you some ideas for how to find the right positioning for your productized services. For more advice on setting up and running your productized service business, check out our blog.

You can also sign up for a free trial of ManyRequests all-in-one order management platform to help you sell your services online.