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Episode# 003 The Subscription Advantage: Transform Your Business with Recurring Revenue
May 16, 2024
Add subscription services to your business to get consistent recuring monthly revenue coming in!
Episode Description:
Join host Rebecca Van Diest in this insightful episode of "Marketing Strategies Uncovered" as she delves into the transformative power of subscription services in businesses. Discover how adding subscription models can recession-proof your business, create recurring revenue streams, and enhance customer loyalty.
Rebecca shares real-world examples, strategies, and tips on how to integrate subscription services into different industries, making it a must-listen for entrepreneurs, marketers, and business owners seeking sustainable growth.
Whether you're looking to unlock new revenue streams, retain customers, or innovate your business model, this episode provides valuable insights and actionable advice to help you succeed in the subscription economy.
Tune in to learn how subscriptions can be a game-changer for your business and take your marketing strategies to the next level.
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Full Transcription:
Hey friends, and welcome to another episode of Marketing Strategies Uncovered. I'm your host, Rebecca Van Diest, and I'm so excited to chat with you today. I've been having an amazing week working on something and I'm really excited to be sharing it with you today. I feel like it's something that's so amazing for businesses and it's really underutilized too.
So today we're going to be talking about using subscription services to recession proof your business. I'm speaking for myself and I'm also going to be sharing an example with you of something that I remember from 15 years ago, that I loved, that was a subscription service. So we're going to dive into that.
You may be having a hard time in your business right now. It was interesting when 2020 hit, I remember thinking to myself, Oh no, this is going to be really bad for businesses. I was even thinking that housing prices were going to go down and really was the opposite.
Everybody stayed home. They wanted to fix up their houses. They were spending all this money. Not that it was easy for everyone, but it seemed like there was a lot more money going around in 2020 than everybody expected. So that was a really interesting time. One of my really good friends opened his construction business in 2020, he had a really great year that year, and it's only grown, and I think it's kind of slowed down a little bit, but because of how he's structuring his business, he's doing amazing, and hopefully you are too.
So personally, I'm noticing a decline in my business. And this is because a lot of my clients are contractors or they're in that space of things that are kind of optional or that people might hold off on if money's tight. You know, clients are struggling to stay afloat.
Sometimes they're not booking as many services as they were. They're having to get more creative. But on the other hand, a lot of my clients are sticking with me. They know that SEO is working for them. They're happy with what they have. So we just keep going.
Everybody's having to adjust right now. So with myself, because I've seen that decline, I'm having to get more creative. And it's like that with anything in life, you know, we never stay the same. Either we're growing or we're shrinking. I always try to grow.
A business owner that I've been talking to for a few weeks, they were excited to start SEO, I sent them over my packages and they realized that it's just out of their budget right now, but they know they really need my services. I did a website audit for them a few months ago, and their website does need a lot of help.
It's actually maybe one of the worst that I've seen as far as the backlinks go, you can tell something really weird happened at some point. It needs to be corrected with SEO basically. She was just having a hard time committing to six months. You know, there's a lot of uncertainty right now and I totally get that.
I realized I needed to do something different. So one, people don't like to be locked in, right? In my SEO packages, it's a six month commitment. So what could I do to not have that lock in period where people can feel like they've got a little more freedom and if they've got a bad month they can pause their subscription.
Then number two, how can I have more affordable options for people, but also not feel like I'm devaluing my services or devaluing my time? I got some feedback last week saying I needed to lower my prices and it just didn't feel good. I've worked really hard. I'm really good at what I do. Hopefully you feel the same and you've reached a point in your business and you're not willing to go backward. I do need to be charging what I'm charging. So what I did is I came up with a really cool strategy. And that is subscription services.
For me, I'm subscribed to a Pesty, Netflix, google Storage! There's all these different subscriptions that you can get, and it's nothing really personalized, it's not taking up a lot of their time, but they are providing you a service. They might have to pay to mail you a bill or pay somebody to email you or chat with you for customer service.
I wanted to get into what I believe with the subscription service and how you can add that to your business. And I'd like you to think about how it can apply to your industry. We all have different services and we can provide different subscription services. And I really do think that this is super hot right now.
When you buy a house, you get all this mail, and everybody wants to sell you something. I remember one thing that I got was from a plumbing company, and they were called Casey's Plumbing. Something really cool that they had was a subscription service and I think they had different tiers. Basically what you would do is you would sign up with them. I believe it was something like $50 a month that you would pay them, and with that $50 you got free annual inspections of your plumbing.
What they did with that $50 is they put it in a savings account for you. So when you did need to get like a new toilet or you had a pipe leak or something, you could actually use that money towards the service. So like for us, we had an older townhouse, we replaced both toilets and it was really expensive. And let's say it was like $2,000 and we had about $1,000 in our account. So it made it so much more affordable and it makes it so much easier to say yes. You feel like you're getting a deal even though it's actually your own money. It's kind of funny how that works.
So anyway, I thought that was amazing and I've never seen anybody else do that. Personally, if I want to work with somebody and it's a service that I know that I'm going to be using and I feel like I'm getting a good deal, that's the best way to do it.
So if you are a contractor, I would encourage you to think about something like that, where you're kind of locking that customer in with loyalty to you. So like HVAC, for example, what are you doing to make them want to get a yearly inspection with you? That's a good question, right?
So next thing I wanted to cover is how am I adding subscription services to my business? So, if you don't know already, I specialize in SEO services and my main thing for the past four years has been SEO packages, and they have ranged from $300 to $3,000.
Last year I was onboarding one or two new clients for my SEO packages every month. I had an amazing year last year, I will say it was fantastic. My best year yet for sure. And then November came, and I stopped onboarding clients and this can be kind of typical during the holiday season. A lot of people are focusing on spending time with their family.
But normally for me in January, I start getting new clients. People are thinking about their marketing, they're excited to add SEO. Yesterday, another client was asking how, they can save money as a contractor. So I knew I needed to do something different. I've been thinking about subscriptions and I came up with a really great strategy that there's a lot of different things that I offer that people like to add on.
Now that I've done my free SEO course that you can find on my website, it really helped me outline my SEO process, my strategies, and I know what it takes for websites to rank. Some things people can do themselves. If you're on a budget, if you've got a team and you want to train them, you can literally have somebody go through my SEO podcast.
Episode number two you can learn how to do your own SEO audit. You can grab the tools, know what you're doing, if you're comfortable with your website platform, you can build landing pages, you can post blog posts. Really what you need is your backlinks, citations, things like that.
So there's ways you can do it on a budget. You can break it down. You don't have to pay, $500 a month, you could pay $100 a month and just get the backlinks. So that's what I decided to do with my subscription services, it's month to month. So you just subscribe.
And then if you need to cancel, you just let us know. For my subscription services, they're going to be a little less personalized. I'm not going to take the time every month to review their website, come up with a strategy for them. So it saves me time, which saves money, and then I can pass that along to my subscribers.
Another great tip is you want to give people three options. As humans, we tend to pick the middle option. So when you have your subscription services, you want to have three different options and then focus on the second one as the choice that most people are probably going to pick.
And so when you're deciding, okay, how much money do I want to make every month? You can understand, okay, if my prices are between $100 and $300, most people are probably going to spend around $200 with me. How many people do I need to become subscribers, or how many people do I need to enroll, so that way I can meet my monthly goal?
That was something I did, and I have a number in my head, so I know how many subscribers I'm going to shoot for. So, that's how I'm adding subscriptions to my business. I'm so excited because I really feel like this is going to be a game changer and it's going to help me reach that next level in my business.
Also, what add-on's can people add to your subscriptions? So for me, a lot of people like to add content. So people can purchase that separately now for the first time. So basically I'm trying to create more options so people can have what they need.
You need high value backlinks to create that 30, 30 trust flow citation flow. You can buy that now. And you probably only need to do that once a year. So that's awesome. Give your website a little SEO boost with backlinks and citations are another thing you don't need all the time. So you can just buy those once every six months.
So today I want to ask you, what can you do? What service do people need from you on a regular basis?
And how can you provide that in a subscription form? Get recurring income as long as you're delivering on what you're doing for your clients.
This is also a great thing to reach out to past clients because maybe they canceled with you because they couldn't afford your service, but you now have a new option for them. You now have another affordable or different way for them to work with you.
So don't be afraid to reach out to past clients, let your current clients know that you have another option. By letting your current clients know about your new subscription, they can refer that to other people that they know. Make it easy for people to work with you.
I really hope that this episode helped and thank you so much for listening to Marketing Strategies Uncovered, and I will talk with you again next week.
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