A few years ago, entrepreneurs realized that by drop shipping products they could grow businesses with little overhead. They didn’t need to run their own factory or pay rent on a warehouse to store their products.
They just needed to get potential customers interested in their products and they could have the product delivered right to their doorstep.
The magic of the internet was unleashed.
Now, entrepreneurs are realizing they can do the same for services. Just like drop shipping sells products to consumers, drop servicing sells services to other businesses.
As the owner of a drop servicing business, you’ll run the logistics of the business while having employees or contractors perform the services. Your customers will pay for marketing, SEO, or Facebook ad services, and you’ll act as the middleman between “factory” and “product.”
In this case, the factory is your hired contractors and employees who specialize in that service. Your product is the service they specialize in.
These services can be things like:
- Marketing
- SEO
- Facebook ads
- Copywriting
- Content writing
- Graphic Design
- Etc.
While drop servicing isn’t a new concept, it’s a viable business model with tons of past success stories to support it.
Why Start a Drop Servicing Business
Drop servicing businesses can also be called agencies. The agency model creates a team of people who are awesome at certain services and is led by one or more founders or managers that help add more clients to the roster, and more team members as necessary.
They’re ideal for entrepreneurs who are skilled at the backend of business. They can delegate their little heart out and they know how to hire for what they need, not what they think they need.
While these entrepreneurs are skilled at business—they’re not necessarily skilled at a particular specialty like SEO or copywriting. They don’t keep up with content marketing trends or focus on becoming a highly skilled copywriter.
Instead, they keep up with operations that can make their business run more smoothly and are passionate about building a business that isn’t tied to the amount of time they spend on a specific service.
And that’s why entrepreneurs are looking at the drop servicing business model.
While they create a funnel of inbound leads, they can scale their business without necessarily spending more time working. Tim Ferriss would be proud.
How to Start a Drop Servicing Business
The first thing you’ll do as an entrepreneur interested in drop servicing is to choose your niche. What do you offer your clients? You can offer them a wide variety of services or a specific service.
For example, you could offer them marketing help from A–Z, helping them with their brand messaging all the way to their email campaigns. Or, you could offer them a specific service, like copywriting for website pages.
Once you know what your service will be, you’ll start to find your team. Since you’ll need savvy marketers, copywriters, etc. you’ll need to hire people that have experience in this field and are ready to keep learning. Since the world of marketing is always changing, they’ll need to be regularly trained on best practices through courses and workshops. You can also have them showcase their expertise by receiving a certification in copywriting or SEO.
Then, you’ll need to start looking for clients. As a marketer, your clients are everywhere—it’s just a matter of speaking to them in a language they can understand. We call this their pain points.
These are the things that are causing them pain by not being resolved. For example, a business that wants to run Facebook ad campaigns, but doesn’t have anyone on their team experienced enough, has a pain point. They know they can sell more products, but they’re stuck without being able to build a Facebook campaign they know will give them an ROI.
That’s where you come in.
By honing in on your customer avatar, you know exactly what to say to make them realize that your drop servicing business can solve one of their largest challenges (in this case, their desire to launch Facebook ad campaigns).
You’ll show them that you understand the challenge through your landing pages, social media posts, ads, and any other content in your marketing process. This will help lead them down the Customer Value Journey, moving them from newly aware of your drop servicing business to paying customers.
And that’s the basics of drop servicing.
And once you’re ready to get started, there are just a few things you need to define…
#1: Choose the service you’ll be “dropping”
#2: Define your ideal customer
#3: Figure out how to move them from newly aware of your company to a paying customer
Once you have those basics mapped out, you’re ready to get started!
